Panel forbids new daycare in Westmount

Non-subsidized centre is ready, but committee says there’s no need

Jacinthe Deschênes has been dreaming for years of opening a private daycare in Westmount Park. Over the last two years she has moved well beyond the dream stage.

She and her partner have invested over $150,000 in a plan to open a private, non-subsidized daycare for 60 kids, three to five years old, in the basement of the Westmount Park United Church. Last August, Deschênes signed a 25-year lease with the church. She has hired an architect to come up with a design to adapt the heritage building to meet the needs of her daycare, including a side door that would have given direct access to the park. Approval for her renovations was sought and granted by the city of Westmount and financing was secured. Word got out in the community, and parents of more than 100 children have expressed interest in the daycare, which was to open in January.

Her research indicated there are only six government-approved daycares operating in Westmount, all with waiting lists. Deschênes is confident she can find more than enough clients. A daycare that operated in the same church basement for decades always had waiting lists, until it closed in 2017.

But late last month, Deschênes received some very bad news. The regional committee that makes recommendations to the government about which daycare projects should receive permits decided not to recommend her project. They said the project is located in an administrative territory — CSSS Cavendish, which also includes Westmount and parts of Côte Saint-Luc, NotreDame-de-Grâce and Montreal West — that does not need more daycare spaces.

In December, the law governing daycare services in the province was changed. Now, local committees in each territory evaluate every demand to open a daycare, even projects that are private and not seeking government subsidies. The nine-member committees must evaluate each project for “relevance, feasibility and quality ” and make recommendations to the ministry.

Deschênes’s project met the criteria for everything but relevance; the committee said supply is already meeting demand for daycare spaces in that territory.

But Deschênes said the government’s numbers game is wonky.

“People are desperate for daycare in Westmount,” she said.

She argues there are only six government-approved daycares in Westmount offering a total of 437 spaces for a population of 22,000.

Karl Filion, an aide to Families Minister Luc Fortin, said the new law is designed to ensure that Quebec’s daycare system meets the needs of families in every territory.

“The ministry has demographic predictions regarding needs, existing daycare spaces and those that are being developed between now and 2021. For that sector (which includes Westmount), we are predicting a surplus.”

Asked why a private, non-subsidized daycare should not be allowed to take a chance and open wherever the entrepreneur believes it makes sense, Filion said that even non-subsidized daycares still pose some cost to the government, notably the tax credits parents can claim for their daycare fees.

He noted Deschênes can appeal the decision — she is — but he said it is rare for a daycare to be granted a permit without the regional committee’s recommendation.

Deschênes said the committees should not focus doggedly on numbers in artificially drawn territories, and instead put more emphasis on the quality of service offered. She said the committee has not seen her 126-page education plan or her five-year financial plan because the review process does not request these documents.

“It’s ludicrous. If I moved my daycare down a few streets to St-Henri or Verdun, I could get approved to open my daycare in an old video club or whatever. But what people want is a daycare in a park.”

Deschênes is not alone. She has joined a Facebook group of frustrated would-be daycare operators. Geneviève Simard, an entrepreneur who is trying to open a private, non-subsidized daycare in Shannon, near Quebec City, told Radio-Canada her project has been snubbed by the regional committee there for the same reason.

“Do we say, ‘You can’t open a Subway beside a Tim Hortons because there is too much supply’? People have the right to say if they want coffee or subs,” she told Radio-Canada.