Odin Says ...

Those Notorious Waiting Lists

Dec 10, 2009

'The day Santa Claus came a visitin'' by Axel Bührmann, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License

Daycares around Montreal started their year a few months ago, and the scene, for some centers, was quite the circus, as usual.  In general, this goes for the government-subsidized $7-a-day CPEs (Centres de la Petite Enfance).

It is common knowledge that in the Montreal area, there is a significant shortage of those CPEs.  In fact, the situation is so bad that many centers maintain a waiting list of over five hundred names.  In certain cases, families can wait so long before their turn that by the time they get called, they have either found alternate arrangements or their child has actually moved on to elementary school.

In 2009, the province plans to add 14,000 spots to the existing 206,000.  While this definitely represents a step up (a 7% increase), it will not solve the problem of the ever-growing waiting lists.

One CPE in particular tried something different a few years ago, to open up places more fairly.  The Montreal Day Nursery, part of the Downtown YMCA, scrapped its ongoing waiting list of over 600 names, and introduced a first-come, first-served system for its 80 spots.  In short, the centre would start a new list every year, with the first spot going to the first person at its front door on the annual registration opening day, and so on.

As a result, parents started lining up and camping out at the center's doors as early as 24 hours prior to opening.  So the solution was not without its own problems.

Some other centers have decided to outsource the management of their waiting lists to La Coopérative Enfance Famille, a private organization endorsed by the province that runs a website used to centralize participating daycares' lists (over 150 centers registered).  The website presents parents with a one-stop option to register their kids at several centers at a time.

La Coopérative Enfance Famille can be found at enfancefamille.org.