Number of childcare spaces going down in Quebec

Quebec daycare spaces continue to go down despite the Legault government's commitment to create more spaces.

The number of spaces in the childcare network in Quebec is decreasing, despite the commitment made by the Legault government in 2021.

At the end of August, there were 304,084 spaces in all types of childcare services, subsidized or not, a net decrease compared to May, 304,359, according to data from the Ministry of Families dashboard.

This is a slight decrease, but it goes against the trend the government wants.

The most significant reduction was recorded in subsidized family childcare services, 853, which the creation of spaces in Early Childhood Centres (286) and subsidized daycares (281) could not compensate for.

At the same time last year, the government had nevertheless created spaces and reduced the waiting list by 1,681 children.

The PQ opposition is concerned about this stagnation, since the government committed in 2021 to creating 37,000 subsidized spaces in the network by March 2025, at a cost of $3 billion. This corresponded to the number of children on the waiting list at the time.

According to PQ MNA Joel Arseneau, the Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ) seems to have underestimated the scale of the project.

In an interview with The Canadian Press, he noted that the government says it has created 18,790 spaces in total as of last August, while 34,055 children are still on the waiting list.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on Oct. 22, 2024.