New one-stop shop for Quebec daycares won’t be in place until June 2024

QUÉBEC – The one-stop shop for registering a child in a daycare service won’t be in place before June 2024, the Legault government announced Wednesday.

By then, it will then be a “trial period” before actually coming into operation in September 2024, Family Minister Suzanne Roy told a morning press scrum in parliament.

The Minister was commenting on the publication in the Gazette officielle of the draft regulation to set up this one-stop shop.

This is “the next real waiting list (…) so it’s eagerly awaited by parents”, she said.

Currently, more than 37,000 children are waiting for a childcare space. There is already a site called La Place 0-5 ans to register your child, but this platform does not distribute places.

If the regulation is adopted, there will be a clear “obligation” for daycare services and for requesting parents to register on the list, assured the Minister.

At present, despite being on waiting lists, parents have to go through a lot of hoops to get a place: they have to phone, e-mail, show up at the daycare center, etc. The minister intends to put an end to arbitrariness in this area.

“There won’t be someone randomly selecting a client. This will be done from our computer service. We’ll be the ones to give the name to the Centre de la petite enfance (CPE) which declares it has a vacancy: here’s the first child on your list.”

There will be a “ordering policy” to determine the order of priority of the children.

The basic criterion will be the desired entry date.

There will be a centralized waiting list for each CPE. Parents will be able to apply to several daycares, including CPEs, subsidized, and private daycares.

-This report by The Canadian Press was first published on Sept. 20, 2023.