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

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