The Parti Quebecois is promising to overhaul the payment structure for subsidized daycares.
Jean-Francois Lisée said if his party is elected in the fall it will bring back universal daycare fees and get rid of the sliding scale introduced by the Liberals.
“What we're doing today is lifting more obstacles for having more children in Quebec go into quality daycare,” he said.
Under the current plan set up by the Liberal government, families with higher incomes pay up to $21/day for daycare.
Under the PQ proposal parents would pay no more than $8.05 per day for one child, and an additional $4 for a second child. Third children in daycares -- a very rare scenario -- would be free.
Families with a household income of less than $34,000 would be granted free daycare.
It’s welcome news for the Quebec Association of Public Daycares, which argues child care should be accessible regardless of income.
“Absolutely. It's a service that's as important as going to the hospital and having healthcare provided, that's going to be free for every individual,” said Louis Senecal of the AQCPE.
Lisée said any PQ government would implement this plan gradually.
"That's $130 million. And as we say we're not going to do this on the first day, we're going to spread it over four years," said Lisée.
He said that the PQ would also evaluate what would be fiscally possibly toward the end of the summer.
"We're going to look at what the Auditor General tells us in August about the public finances in Quebec. This is a very high priority for us given the availability of funds that we have," said Lisée.
This weekend the PQ holds a council meeting involving MNAs and rank-and-file party members in St. Hyacinthe.
