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Almost three decades after it was launched, Quebec’s low-cost, universal child-care plan is back in the news.
The spotlight is shining on the province thanks to New York mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, who says it will serve as a model for the city’s plan to offer free daycare to all children aged six weeks to five years old.
But as others emulate it, has Quebec’s ambitious child-care program lived up to the promise?
Yes, and no.
Launched in 1997 by the Parti Québécois government, the plan was to offer quality child care to all children of preschool age for $5 a day.
The centrepiece of the program was a network of Centre de la petite enfance (CPE) facilities that did not just offer daycare, but also early childhood education by trained educators, along with healthy home-cooked meals and snacks.
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The two knocks against Quebec’s universal child-care program are that it’s not really universal because it’s too difficult get the good spots in CPEs; and the province has sacrificed quality for quantity, prioritizing getting kids in daycare over offering them first-rate early childhood education.
In a damning report published last year, Quebec’s Auditor-General said 41 per cent of care facilities failed to meet quality standards, ranging from 21 per cent for CPEs to 59 per cent for subsidized private daycares. (Quality was measured based largely on child/educator ratios, the educational qualifications of workers, and programs offered.)
Child-care advocates have, for years, argued that access should be universal and free, just as it is for public school.
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The payback from child care comes in the long-term, not the short term, and its impact can be difficult to measure, so it can be a difficult sell in the political cycle.
But we should heed Mr. Mamdani’s message: that child care should be an integral part of our social infrastructure. It is part of the education system – not a babysitting service for those who can afford it.