It's also hard to pry apart what "pays for itself" and what doesn't. Quebec doesn't just have incredibly high taxes, they are subsidized by the rest of the productive provinces in the country to the tune of about 10% of their yearly budget. A 10% cut in spending would be classified as incredibly harsh austerity in most cases, and so taking any sort of predictive value from the success of programs run by Quebec is very hard. It should also be noted that for all of these efforts to give incredibly generous benefits to Quebec parents, their birthrate is still among the lowest in Canada and buoyed up only by immigration. So it isn't even really helping people have more children.
Lots of incorrect facts in that comments that need to be corrected.
The program was measured to be productive in the sense that the increased expenses for the program was paid back by the increase income taxes generated by more parents going to work IN THE PROVINCE. Since beginning the program more than two decades ago, Quebec has seen the rate of women age 26 to 44 in the workforce reach 85 percent, the highest in the world (and in Canada). More taxes paid by moms (and dads) paid for the price of the program. So yes, you can measure the success of the program and has nothing to do with the provincial perequation system for having a lower GDP.
Also, the birthrate is not among the lowest, it's actually right in the middle (per capita) and ahead of Ontario (which has the most similar economy). Quebec used to be among the lowest rate in Canada and what the program has done is increasing it dramatically, this has been measured by multiple studies.
