The owners of half of the province's private daycares closed their doors Tuesday to protest the latest policy proposal from the Marois government.
They held protests in Montreal and Quebec City to denounce the provincial government's plan to create hundreds of new daycares in order to provide 15,000 more subsidized spaces.
Daycare owners like Jennifer Park say that is a waste of time and effort.
"At this point we have 36,000 spots in the private network and 10,000 of those spots are empty," said Park.
Private daycare owners said it makes more sense for the government to take advantage of their existing network and subsidize their businesses, instead of stealing their customers.
"The problem that we have as private daycares is that families in our centres have been waiting for $7 a day [daycare spots] for years," said Park.
Pauline Marois introduced subsidized daycare in Quebec in 1997 when she was education minister, and during last year's election campaign she pledged to create roughly 30,000 more spots.
However, owners of private daycares are not allowed to apply to transform their company into a publicly-funded institution.
Family minister Nicole Leger reiterated that decision on Tuesday, saying the provincial government will not allow private daycare operators to apply to run the new subsidized daycares.
