1. Objectifs

Intentions :
« This paper seeks to answer [the following] questions with a detailed examination of Quebec’s ECEC [early childhood education and care] story. It will argue that this policy story is best told as one of an ideological clash fought by particular interests within the political institutions of Quebec, and therefore as backtracking. » (p. 3)

Questions/Hypothèses :
« How might we understand this strategy with respect to ECEC? Is the Quebec story simply one of rolling out neo-liberalism, in which the Liberals are designing a better form of neoliberalism than the Parti Québécois government could because it was under pressure from women’s groups and other progressive forces? To pose the question counterfactually, would (and will) the PQ have done the same? Or, are these, in contrast, efforts to push back on what had been designed in 1997 as Quebec’s response to the impasse of neo-liberalism? Are they better understood as efforts inspired by the ideology of classic neo-liberalism to which the Charest government subscribes and which therefore finds the Quebec model a weight to be cast off, bit by bit if one heave can not do it? In other words, are these efforts to back track on what in 1997 was a significant innovation in the direction of both a modernised and a progressive social politics? » (p. 3)

2. Méthode

Type de traitement des données :
Essai

3. Résumé

« It is the content of its reforms that we recognise the fundamentally different vision of the Liberals, one that pays no heed to the new social risks and the impasse of neoliberal strategies. Gone is any emphasis on the needs of all children for ECEC and the even greater needs of some children. The principal goals are to keep costs down, to ensure a supply of spaces, to level the playing field for commercial providers, and to provide parents with flexible forms of services. This is, in other words, a publicly funded child care system emptied of much of its ECEC content, increasingly responsive to market signals rather than social justice concerns and notion of being part of a societal project. This push back in the ECEC is not, of course, surprising. The Liberals have not hidden their sources of inspiration, whether it is the Thatcherist view of TINA (there is no alternative) (Boismenu, Dufour and Saint-Martin, 2004) or Monique Jérôme-Forget’s fondness for the Milton Friedman quote, ’less government is better government’ (quoted in Cornellier, 2004). In such a society, the role of the state is limited: ’a supportive resource rather than a legislator of centralized solutions.’ Nor have the Liberals concealed their vision of Quebec not as a society but as a ’Québec of 7 million ambitions,’ that is a collection of individuals. Nothing in their platform or their recent history, including that of their leader, would have led to an expectation of anything but neoliberalism. There are, then, two lessons that can be drawn from this roll back to neoliberalism. One is that when neoliberalism returns even the limits of ’after neoliberalism’ politics begin to look pretty good. The second is that mobilisation in opposition can contain some of the worst effects. Canadians take heed. » (pp. 22-23)