“In my entire career, my greatest pride is having created the CPE,” says Pauline Marois in a telephone interview with La Presse.
The creation of these daycare services in 1997, when she was Minister of Families and Children, combined with the Quebec Parental Insurance Plan (RQAP), caused “a change in culture,” she summarizes. She.
Whether it is the participation rate of women in the labor market, the wealth of families, the involvement of fathers with their children, notes Ms. Marois, the CPE and the RQAP, as well as kindergarten to full time at age 5, changed everything.
We are a long way from the time when housewives accused her of stealing their children, back then, notes Ms. Marois. “I had demonstrations of mothers with strollers in front of the National Assembly! »
Without being a killjoy, we point out that many parents have great difficulty finding a place in childcare, that daycare centers are no longer as popular, with private daycares having notably been favored by governments after his.
She knows it too well. “I had four children, all of whom became parents. Only one of them found a place in a CPE, my other three had to enroll my grandchildren in a private daycare,” where the quality of services is lower, she notes.
Ms. Marois emphasizes that she generally remains very shy before giving her opinion, on the one hand because of her lack of appetite for controversies and, on the other hand, because she says she has suffered from the interventions of prime ministers who preceded her.
“I have done a few outings, I do a little more on early childhood policies, but I do it with reserve, without throwing red bullets, even if I should, sometimes! »
So she starts, as it’s a subject that continues to be close to her heart. We must, she says, complete the network of CPEs, return to a ratio of two-thirds of specialized educators, create a sufficient number of places and develop 4-year-old kindergartens in disadvantaged areas as a priority.
Because numerous studies demonstrate the superiority of CPEs, which are “the subject of fewer complaints than private daycares”.
The childcare network, as in other sectors, suffers from shortages, we note. And salaries, particularly in Montreal where apartments are so expensive, are not likely to attract the next generation. “At the top of the scale, salaries are relatively decent,” replies Ms. Marois, “but valorization of this work remains necessary. »
Marie Gendron, President and CEO of the Conseil de gestion de l’assurance parentale, points out that according to a UNICEF study, Quebec ranks 4th – out of 42 countries studied – in terms of family policy. The rest of Canada only ranks 27th*.
This means that during this week’s conference, Quebec “will be on the lookout for the best in the world”, but being “more in the category of ‘example to follow’ than ‘lessons to take’. ””.
In 2020, Quebec, she said, took its logic a little further by making sure to involve fathers more. Until then, when it came to shareable weeks of parental leave, women took almost all of them.
And this is crucial, says Ms. Gendron, “because when the father is involved in the first days of life, when he packs the diaper bag, he remains involved in parental tasks” for good, even if we are not yet at a 50/50 sharing of tasks.
