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Incumbent Action Démocratique du Québec MNA for Groulx Linda Lapointe, one of five ADQ MNAs on the North Shore who are vying to be returned to office in the Dec. 8 provincial election, is focusing on the interests of families. The ADQ is offering a $100 per week/per child subsidy to families that don't place their children in the province's $7 a day children's daycare network.
An ADQ beachhead
In the last election, the ADQ, which won 41 National Assembly seats, was able to establish a beachhead on the North Shore — one of the fastest growing areas in the Montreal region — where reasonably-priced single-family homes and lower than average property taxes in new suburbs in Mascouche, Mirabel, St. Janvier and Ste. Anne des Plaines have been contributing to a rapid growth in the number of young families taking up residence.
"There are many families in the area, but they don't have daycare places to take care of their children," Lapointe, who is the ADQ's spokesperson on family and senior citizens' issues, said in an interview with NSN. According to an ADQ estimate, 40 per cent of Quebec women are employed in sectors where the hours are irregular — not nine-to-five. The figure is 35 per cent for men. The ADQ sees its $100 per child subsidy as a way of accommodating these parents whose lifestyle may not fit the children's daycare system as currently structured.
Serving different needs
"If they work of if they don't work it doesn't matter," said Lapointe, a former supermarket operator who was elected last time with an 8.6 per cent lead over the second-place PQ. While the ADQ's $100 subsidy has an unconventional ring, comparable perhaps to 'flat tax' proposals that right-of-centre political parties often table, Lapointe insists the subsidy idea is an example of the party's awareness that not all families' needs are identical. "It is maybe not conventional, but most of the people do not have conventional lives, and we are just trying to help them to have conventional lives," she said.
"That is why we propose measures that help each family while respecting their differences." The ADQ is critical of the current daycare system, which was conceived by the Parti Québécois, and largely expanded by the present Liberal government. Since taking over the role of official opposition in the National Assembly following the 2007 election, the party has been raising awareness of the shortcomings in the system and maintains that the parents of 73,000 children across the province have no access to subsidized daycare. The ADQ estimates 16,000 children have no access to subsidized daycare in the lower Laurentian region alone.
Other issues
"What do we tell the parents who do not meet the requirements for the $7 daycare places?" Lapointe said, noting that in her own riding, just six new daycare spaces are being allotted for the next three years. "The Liberals and Péquistes are saying these people are on their own. In the ADQ, were are saying they can run their everyday lives as they see fit, while also having the freedom to choose the system that suits them best." The ADQ also supports the re-establishment of a $5,000 allotment Quebec once paid families that gave birth to a third child and each one after that.
They also advocate lengthening the parental leave period. Other issues Lapointe is addressing include a higher-than-average school dropout rate on the North Shore — "One out of two young men don't graduate from Secondary V," she said — and the growing need to introduce measures, such as expanded health care, which would allow senior citizens to be able to stay out of institutions and live at home longer. "If you give them a tax credit, it's good, but we have to help them more than that," she said.
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