EXCERPTS:
In the budget the Parti Québécois government introduced two weeks before calling the election, the party set its sights on subsidized daycare as a possible source of revenue.
It proposed to increase the rate from $7 a day, to $8 in September, and then finally to $9 in 2015, anticipating $120 million in additional revenues for the government.
As it turns out, about 55 per cent of the 1,400 Quebecers who responded to Radio-Canada's CROP poll said they were in favour of such an increase. Thirty-eight per cent said they were opposed.
Two-thirds of respondents also said they were in favour of annually indexing the price of daycare and school child care. Of this measure:
28 per cent said they were "very favourable"
39 per cent said they were "somewhat favourable"
Meanwhile, 22 per cent of people who were polled said they were opposed to the annual increases.
Elsewhere in Canada, the average cost of daycare for a child between one and three years old is $32 a day. The average rates in Ontario and British Columbia are $43 and $42, respectively.
-reprinted from CBC News