Supreme Court to hear Quebec’s challenge to daycare access for asylum seekers

OTTAWA — The Supreme Court of Canada has agreed to hear a challenge from the Quebec government to a lower court ruling granting asylum seekers access to subsidized daycare spaces.

In a decision released Thursday, the Supreme Court announced it would grant leave to the province’s attorney general regarding a February 2024 decision from the Court of Appeal, which found that Quebec’s daycare rules are discriminatory. Quebec’s highest court ruled that asylum seekers who hold a valid work permit are entitled to register their children in the public daycare system.

The case originated with a woman from the Democratic Republic of Congo who applied for asylum and obtained a work permit, but her three children were denied access to the heavily subsidized daycare network. They were denied because Quebec’s rules provided access to the system only once refugee status was granted by the federal government.

Spaces in the highly sought-after network cost roughly $9 a day.

Quebec has already lost twice in court over the matter in two very different lower court rulings.

In May 2022, Quebec Superior Court Justice Marc St-Pierre ruled in favour of the complainant because the Quebec government had adopted its daycare limits “without legislative authority.” Therefore, the judge said, the rule blocking access to asylum seekers was inoperative.

St-Pierre, however, did not agree with the complainant that she was a victim of discrimination.

The Court of Appeal, meanwhile, ruled that the opposite was true.

Quebec did have the power to limit access to its daycare network, but the three Court of Appeal justices concluded unanimously that the regulation was discriminatory toward women and therefore contravened Section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

In Quebec City on Thursday, Family Minister Suzanne Roy said the Court of Appeal ruling opened the door to about 7,000 daycare-aged children of asylum seekers who would require the equivalent of 88 subsidized daycare centres to place them.

On the X platform, Roy said those spots would cost $300 million in infrastructure investments, $120 million in subsidies and an additional 900 early childhood educators.

However, Carole Senneville, president of the CSN union, said in a statement Thursday the government is engaging in the “judicial harassment” of asylum seekers. The province, she added, has not followed through on a promise to build sufficient capacity in the daycare network.

She says the solutions to the problem are known and “targeting asylum seekers is not one of them. What is needed is more places in early childhood centres and in family educational daycare services.”

The Supreme Court decision on Thursday comes as Quebec is pressuring the federal government to transfer half of the asylum seekers in the province elsewhere in Canada.

“It is important that this case be heard by the Supreme Court,” Immigration Minister Jean-François Roberge said on X. “We have been saying it for months: Quebec can no longer continue to accept so many asylum seekers.”

“Our public services, including our educational daycare services, are completely overwhelmed and it is the federal government’s responsibility to act.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 3, 2024.

The Canadian Press