In Quebec, Child Care Is Infrastructure
As U.S. policymakers consider ideas to improve child care affordability, a new report shows how Quebec’s universal subsidized system enabled it to weather the pandemic.
Many of Quebec’s nonprofit child care centers not only stayed open during the pandemic; some of them thrived as new families that enrolled during the Covid-19 recovery diversified their rolls.
Photographer: Rita Franca/NurPhoto via Getty Images
While child care centers across the U.S. have faced a spate of closures during the pandemic, the Canadian province that pioneered a model for universal subsidized child care had a markedly different experience — even from the rest of Canada.
Though providers in Quebec faced many of the same struggles to keep kids and caregivers safe, more centers were able to stay open, and in some cases thrive.