Quebec newcomers locked out of public daycare spots turning to private

With new provincial rules limiting public daycare for newcomers to Quebec holding open work permits, some families in Montreal are no longer eligible for reduced-rate spots.

And it’s not just newcomers turning away; long public CPE waitlists have also pushed many parents to look at private options.

That’s the reality for Garderie Jardin William, a private daycare in Griffintown.

“Fifty per cent of the clientele is waiting to get a spot offered in a CPE or subsidized daycare,” said owner and president Sophie Apollon-Auguste.

“They love the activities (offered by) the team. But they’re still waiting to get a subsidized spot because the difference in price is quite big.”

At an open house hosted Thursday, the private daycare is filling in the gaps that have been left wide open by the government’s overloaded childcare system.

According to Apollon-Auguste, many families turning to private daycare are citing long waitlists and, in some cases, being forced out of the public system as the main reasons.

“We actually had one family that came to us because they were expelled from their CPE, lost their subsidy, and had to find, in an urgent matter, a spot for their 18-month- old,” she said.

The Quebec government has recently tightened daycare eligibility rules for immigrants, blocking those with open work permits from getting a spot in $10-a-day childcare – also known as CPEs.

Families who had their subsidized daycare spots revoked were reinstated after some parents threatened legal action in July. But under the new rules, newcomers arriving now are fully barred from accessing government-funded daycare.

Apollon-Auguste says the policy shift has only made it harder for families to secure any form of childcare in the province.

“We do have some families who complain about the financial burden,” she said. “And that even if they are super, super satisfied and super attached to the team, after a few months, it gets a burden. So when they get a call via CPE, their heart is here. But financially, they decide to take the spot in the CPE.”

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But newcomers aren’t the only ones turning to private day care.

With fewer subsidized places available, public daycare officials like Alexa Soleil Pariseau say parents are getting on waitlists earlier and earlier.

“Realistically, parents are signing up their children while they’re still pregnant with them because the waiting list is so long,” Pariseau said.

Despite the pressure on families, Pariseau says the biggest issue is capacity, and hopes more support is given to the childcare system to address the increasing demand.

“I truly don’t believe that it’s necessarily a quality issue because we are so regulated in the quality that we offer the children,” she said.

“The issue is not the people that are trying to get access to daycare. The issue at hand is that there are not enough places available.”