The architectural plans for the daycare set to be built in Shawville across from Mill Dam Park at the corner of Isabella Avenue and Clarendon Street were finalized last week and will soon be sent to the province for approval.
The news comes just shy of a year after Quebec’s Family Ministry decided to withdraw from its plan to deliver a prefabricated daycare to the site in Shawville, which was to be one of 43 daycares built as prefabricated modular homes and delivered to sites across the province.
The ministry cancelled its plans to do this when it realized the costs of using the prefabricated method would be too high, a decision which delayed the opening of the new daycare, originally scheduled for this September, by a year.
Now the daycare is scheduled to be open by fall 2025, according to Carole St-Arnaud, director general for 1-2-3 Picabou daycare centre, which manages three CPE facilities under that name in the Pontiac region and is opening its fourth in Shawville.
“I’m optimistic and confident. It’s going well,” St-Arnaud told THE EQUITY in French, assuring she . . .
felt the daycare was on track to opening on time.
She said that when the ministry backed out on its commitment to deliver prefabricated daycares, it set up a system to fasttrack the construction of each of the 43 daycares on their designated sites.
Once the architect’s plans are approved by the ministry, the early childhood centre will open a tender for the new daycare’s construction.
“Seeing the plans from the architect is very exciting,” St-Arnaud said. “We are looking forward to getting shovels in the ground.”
Shawville mayor Bill McCleary is equally optimistic.
“The good part is we know it’s a go, since they’ve already purchased the land and there’s a waiting list,” he said. “So it’s going to happen.”
The new daycare will have 60 spots, 10 of which will be for children under 18 months old.
St-Arnaud figures these new spots will be enough to meet the demand for childcare in the Pontiac, as the new daycare was designed to meet the need assessed by the ministry at the time plans for the daycare first began about a year and a half ago.
Quebec’s Family Ministry manages wait lists for daycares across the province.
In an email to THE EQUITY, a spokesperson for the ministry said that as of May 31, 2023, 56 children were waiting for childcare spaces in MRC Pontiac, and that as of May 31, 2024, 65 spaces were “in the pipeline” for the MRC.
“The supply of places should exceed demand in 2026,” the spokesperson wrote in French.
But Pontiac MNA André Fortin is not convinced the 60 new places set to become available next year will be enough to meet the need in the Pontiac.
“[The government’s] estimation is that once the Shawville daycare is completed, that there will be more than enough spaces for all the kids in the area,” Fortin said.
“From experience and from talking to parents, that definitely does not appear to be the case.”
He explained the government determines the need for daycare spaces based on the number of people on a waitlist in the region.
“Unfortunately there are a lot of people who don’t even feel they have a possibility at this point of eventually accessing a daycare space before their kid goes to kindergarten, so they don’t even bother going on the list,” he said, noting that many people send their kids to daycares in Ontario, or to stay with their grandparents during the day.
“I’m in the process of trying to reconcile what we’re hearing from the community and what the government’s estimates are, to convince them that another project will eventually need to be launched.”
