An economic perspective on the current and future role of nonprofit provision of early learning and child care services in Canada

The Institut de la Statistique du Québec provided access to both the public user version and the restricted version of the Grandir en Qualité data set, and both Carl Drouin and Lucie Gingras were extremely helpful in providing information and research assistance, but neither the ISQ nor the CIQSS is in any way responsible for the use and interpretation of the data. [...] He was very helpful in aiding our understanding of the limitations of the data at the current stage, and the improvements being made for the 2006 and 2007 data. [...] Two of these data sets focus on the determinants of quality in child care services in Quebec, and the third provides data on quality in child care centres in Metropolitan Toronto. [...] In each case, the data available would permit research in general on the role of key determinants of quality in child care settings, and, in particular, on the separate effect of non-profit status and the ways in which non-profit status is linked to other determinants of quality. [...] Everywhere, nonprofits produce a higher quality of care in child care centres, whether measured by the Early Childhood Environments Rating Scale and the Infant Toddler Environments Rating Scale, or by the special scale developed to measure the quality of “educational” child care in Quebec, or by the measures used by the City of Toronto.