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PQ promises $400M for daycare [CA-QC]

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Author: 
Montreal Gazette
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Article
Publication Date: 
10 Nov 2008
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EXCERPTS

A Parti Québécois government would fund $400 million for 30,000 to 38,000 new subsidized $7-a-day daycare spaces in its first year in office, even if there is an economic downturn, PQ leader Pauline Marois said Monday.

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"Our policy is simple; one space per child," Marois said after visiting the Centre de la Petite Enfance La Rose in Blainville, north of Montreal. "Families are the heart of Quebec society."

Pressed on where she would find the money for the new daycare spots, Marois said the current Liberal government has pledged support for roughly the same amount of new spaces, so it shouldn't be too difficult.

"But they want to do that (fund more spaces) over time," Marois stated. "We're saying we will do it right away. Whatever the demand, the government will be ready."

Waiting lists for daycare spaces are said to number in the thousands, and Quebec's birth rate is climbing.

Of the 392,000 children younger than 5 in child care in Quebec in 2008, 93,000 are in private daycare at a cost of about $25 a day, and the rest occupy spaces in the popular and overcrowded public system that costs only $7 a day.

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- reprinted from the Montreal Gazette

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