The Coalition avenir Québec continues the waltz of electoral commitments while the campaign has still not started. On Friday, it was the turn of the Minister of Families, Mathieu Lacombe, to announce the end of unsubsidized private daycare.
The CAQ is committed to injecting $1.4 billion over five years to convert all non-subsidized daycare spaces into subsidized spaces, which, according to Minister Lacombe, will resolve a problem that has persisted for years.
“Within five years, every toddler in Quebec will be able to have a subsidized place at $8.70 in a quality educational childcare service. It also means: fairness, well fairness, between all Quebec parents.
“We’ve been waiting for our network to be completed for 25 years. It’s been 25 years since all parents have had a daycare place for their child or have had to pay $40, 50, if not $60, 65 per day per child,” he said.
There are still tens of thousands of children waiting for a place in subsidized daycare and the 37,000 places promised by the Legault government are slow to materialize.
88,000 places to come
Mathieu Lacombe said that 32,000 of these places will be in progress by the end of August and that the conversion he is announcing targets no less than 56,000 places in non-subsidized daycares.
He says he is convinced that these two initiatives will make it possible to meet the strong demand that the public network has never been able to meet.
“If we want parents to be able to go to work in a context of labor shortage, if we want parents to be able to cope with inflation, in particular, we must give them access to the $8.70 rate. “, he argued.
Already, his ministry launched a first conversion project in August 2021 and a second last June. “We have already done the test as part of the mandate. We converted 3,500 places and I would tell you that, overall, it went well. We learned from all of that.”
Thus, for example, the owners of non-subsidized daycare services will have the choice of becoming early childhood centers (CPE), either non-profit organizations, or remaining private for-profit enterprises, but will not have no other choice but to offer their places at the same price as subsidized daycare centres.
Ministerial or election announcement?
Prime Minister François Legault had promised last June that there would be no more government announcements from him or his ministers as of July 1. However, such announcements are multiplying, but the Deputy Prime Minister, Geneviève Guilbault, who was alongside Minister Lacombe for this one, defended herself from breaking this promise.
“There has been no government announcement since July 1. There was no announcement of new money. Today it is an announcement, I would say, of the Coalition avenir Québec, to be distinguished from a government announcement, ”she said, pointing to the similar actions of other political parties.
For Geneviève Guilbault, “the imminence of the electoral campaign means that the parties are beginning to reveal their intentions a little bit, gradually”.
Despite everything, Friday’s announcement was presented as a firm intention in a future mandate, and this, by the Minister for the Family in title and not by the Prime Minister within the framework of an electoral campaign which is still not not triggered. It is far from certain that the public will make the same distinction as the Deputy Prime Minister between an election announcement and a government announcement.