Our local day care centre is the warm, beating heart of the neighbourhood. It is right in the middle of the block, trees shading its yard. Built of warm red brick, it was once an orphanage. It is exactly 65 steps from my front door. In front, in the concrete sidewalk, is a small running shoe print, along with a small dog paw print. They are the marks of my daughter Emma, then aged 3, and our lamented dog Paddy. On the street the kids and their parents ebb and flow, they laugh and skip and cry their way home and back. They are an unending human parade. I know many of the workers by name. I admire them for their patience and consideration of all of our kids.

When I hear that 8,000 unionized day care workers in 360 day care centres are poised to walk off the job, I am sympathetic. Work stoppages at daycares are massively inconvenient for parents. But consider this: The workers make between $14 and $21 an hour. Many are parents themselves. For that they feed our kids, dress and undress them, in many cases help toilet train them, pick them up when they fall, teach them to sing and draw, get them all down for naps at once, wipe their noses, and help us raise them. Oftentimes they know more about raising kids than we do.

For parents on low incomes, the food and snacks mean that the kids are well fed. For middle class parents it’s a leg up in preparation for school, and a big boost to the economy, because mums can work and have a life outside the home, if they choose to.

PQ Leader Pauline Marois, a mother of four, is the architect of Quebec’s daycare system. Marois’ plan took the universal federal family allowance and invested it in affordable child-care services, including paid parental leave for up to a year. She also gave working parents choices by giving them tax breaks if they chose to keep their children at home with a caregiver or in private daycare centres.

My sister in Toronto, who had to pay up to $100 a day for private daycare, couldn’t get over how great our system is. The Centre for Excellence in Early Childhood Development at the Université de Montréal has data that shows that the daycare environment stimulates children’s ability to learn, and can even be a predictor of success in school and life.

Quebec is way ahead of other provinces in preschool programs and in social programs for families.

Pierre Fortin, an economist at the Université du Québec à Montréal, told Peggy Curran of The Gazette that officials in other provinces are intrigued by recent findings showing that "Quebec’s daycare scheme is as good for the bottom line as it is for long-term health and welfare" and that "Quebec and Ottawa reap $1.49 in taxes for every $1 the province spends on public daycare."

"Governments make money off of Quebec’s subsidized daycare programs, which enable an additional 70,000 Quebec women to be at work. The $2-billion that the provincial government contributes annually to daycare services ultimately generates tax revenues of close to $3-billion for all three levels of government," Fortin told The Gazette, underlining the fact that this means public day care brings in money. "Investment in early childhood education offers the best return in human capital," added Fortin.

Not only has Quebec dramatically reduced child poverty and pushed up school scores, daycares have helped push up the birth rate. Once you have one child in daycare, you get preferential treatment, and your other kids get in automatically. I am quite sure that has contributed to families having two or more kids.

Finance Minister Raymond Bachand has promised to add 15,000 spaces in subsidized daycare by 2013, with priority given to disadvantaged areas.

If the Quebec Liberals want to win hearts and minds they should announce three times that many new spots. The only problem with Quebec’s day care program is that there aren’t enough places for all the people who need them. The shortage has caused all kinds of unfairness and hassles. Nevertheless, Quebec’s system still beats everything in sight.

So, if the daycare workers, who are so good to our kids, want a few more days of vacation, personal leave and a pay increase of 11 per cent over three years, I tend to be favourable.