Quebec wants daycare educators to work 40 hours a week

Photo: Jacques Boissinot The Canadian Press Treasury Board President Sonia LeBel takes part in question period at the National Assembly on October 31, 2023.

Patrice Bergeron – The Canadian Press

Published and updated on October 23

• Québec

The Legault government wants to make daycare educators work more.

In the midst of negotiations to renew collective agreements, Treasury Board President Sonia LeBel opened up on her demands Wednesday: 40-hour weeks, rather than the current 32 to 35 hours.

“I would be very happy if we could reach an agreement on 40 hours per week,” she said during question period.

“That would solve a lot of problems for my colleague,” she added, referring to Families Minister Suzanne Roy, who is grappling with labour shortages in the network.

“If the educators' union tells me, 'Ms. LeBel, we're signing on for 40 hours,' I think things will go better. quickly.”

“There are some who work 40 hours a week, so it's certainly easier,” added Minister of Families Suzanne Roy in an interview with The Canadian Press.

The President of the Treasury Board was responding to a Canadian study that casts Quebec’s early childhood education system in a negative light compared to that of other provinces.

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In this comparative report on early childhood education in the provinces and territories, Quebec is no longer the model to follow, but it is now Prince Edward Island that pays its educators the best.

Sonia LeBel insisted on “correcting the facts,” because, according to her, “it’s inaccurate” and we have to “compare apples with apples.”

With the current offers on the table, an educator in Quebec would earn more than $32 an hour, compared to $30 in Prince Edward Island, argued the President of the Treasury Board.

In addition, educators on the island work 40 hours a week, while workers here work less.

“When we bring them all back to the basis of 40 hours, educators, annually, in Quebec, make more than $4,000 more than those in Prince Edward Island,” she argued.

Negotiations are continuing very slowly for the renewal of educators' employment contracts. Pressure tactics are planned by the CSQ and the CSN in November.

Waiting list

Furthermore, even though the number of spaces has decreased in the childcare network in Quebec recently, Suzanne Roy assured on Wednesday that the government would reach its target set for 2021: to create 37,000 new subsidized spaces by March 2025.

The Parti Québécois (PQ) expressed concern about the data from the Ministry of Families' dashboard at the end of August. We learned that there were 304,084 spaces in all types of child care services, subsidized or not, a net decrease compared to May, 304,359.

The most significant reduction was recorded in subsidized family child care services, 853, which the creation of spaces in Early Childhood Centres (286) and subsidized daycares (281) could not compensate for.

“It is often in August, before the start of the school year, that some [family child care providers] decide to retire, go to a community service or a CPE,” said Ms. Roy, to be reassuring.

She assured that the waiting list of children registered for obtaining child care was steadily decreasing for a 10th consecutive month.

Yet, between March and May, it increased from 28,831 to 31,783, and even from June to August, from 33,172 to 34,055, according to data from his ministry.

As of August 30, the CAQ government had created 18,790 spaces out of the 37,000 it had promised.

No fewer than 18,394 others were “in progress” — a measure that the opposition finds imprecise because it does not indicate the progress of the opening of these spaces.