‘Ghost parents’ clogging Montreal daycare wait lists: report

The number of available spaces in Quebec’s childcare network has been an ongoing issue, and Montreal daycare centres are facing yet another obstacle linked to it: “ghost parents.”

According to LaPresse, some parents contact daycares to update their file and find out their spot on the waiting list, while others forget to do so or don’t know how — even if La Place 0-5, a Quebec site to register your child, requires mandatory updates throughout the year, otherwise the child’s file is archived.

“You failed to make a mandatory update of your child’s file to confirm that you are still looking for a daycare space for your child or to confirm that they have been born or arrived in your family. The file has therefore been archived,” reads the “archived” FAQ section on the Place 0-5 website.

“It is no longer active on La Place 0-5. Facility-based daycares can now no longer contact you.”

“An archived file can be unarchived,” they add.

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

Parents really want a space, so they might register their child to several locations without later following up with the other childcare centres concerned.

This makes managing waiting lists a challenge for the daycare centres — like having to contact more families than before to fill spaces.

This, after receiving refusals from parents because their child was already placed in another childcare service, or parents preferred another facility, or simply because the families contacted don’t return calls.

One-Stop-Shop for Quebec Daycares

Despite being on waiting lists, at the moment, parents have to go through a lot of hoops to get a place: they have to phone, e-mail, show up at the daycare centre, etc.

Quebec Family Minister Suzanne Roy had announced the creation of a “simpler” one-stop shop for accessing childcare spaces.

But back in Sept. 2023, the Legault government said that the one-stop shop won’t be in place before June 2024.

According to LaPresse, the future platform will also include the suspension, then removal from the lists, parents who fail to keep their files up to date.

They added that to avoid arbitrary admissions — only the Ministry will have access to the waiting lists.

However, this new feature reportedly concerns daycare administrators dealing with “ghost parents” — saying that it risks increasing waiting times as the facilities will only be able to access contact information of the first eligible child to fill an available space.

Currently, more than 32,000 children are on the waiting list as of Oct. 31, 2024.

The Montreal and Montérégie regions are the most affected.