I work with the World Forum on Early Care and Education, and I’m heading to Malaysia next week, where I work closely with designing day cares with the largest organizations in the U.S. They are busy in Japan, Hong Kong, and developing countries. It goes beyond simple money but into philanthropic activity, where countries want impressively designed centres to attract big business--hence, the child care centre being built at Japan’s airport.
I would like to make the point that on the ranking of Canadian child care's largest organizations, the YMCA is the single biggest operation in Canada, and there are just a few other non-profit organizations operating in excess of 20 programs. In Ontario we have one private operator who operates 16 sites, and that would rank them 28th on the U.S. chart. I'll point out that in the U.S. chart, the Knowledge Learning Corporation has 2,500 centres; the second ranking, La Petite Academy, has 643; and the ninth place has 88. I wanted to demonstrate the dropping that big box day care is--