A licence is supposed to be a floor. It has never been assumed that a licence, in other words being compliant with the regulations, translates necessarily into quality. Quality is above that. The Ontario government used to say that very clearly. I'm quite familiar with the research on quality of a whole variety of kinds. It is true that licensed child care centres actually have variable quality even if they're licensed. I think you have to dispel that myth. A licence is not the same as quality.
The issue of for-profit and non-profit child care has been with us in Canada for as long as I can remember. I've been working on child care since the 1970s, and the discussion is always the same. Putting that aside, it is definitely clear that the motivation to make a profit, which is usually the objective of a business—and this is not to say anything about anybody on the panel here, because I've never seen your centres, Maureen.... In general, research in a wide number of areas shows that the quality of for-profit child care is not as good as that of non-profit and public child care. A lot of it would have to do with the need to make a profit.
Most of the budget is for staff, so when you have a child care budget, 85% to 90% in a non-profit budget is generally for staff compensation. If you're going to make a direct profit, that's the best place for it to come from. That's why wages are generally lower, turnover is generally higher and education is lower, because even in places, in countries or provinces, where there is a wage scale, you can hire lower on the scale so you get less-expensive staff.
There is other research that looks at things like decision-making and what impact that has on staff. If you think about what makes quality, it's reflective, well-qualified staff who have the latitude to make decisions about what they're going to be doing in their programs. Sometimes—not always, but sometimes—you find very intrusive kinds of decision-making from higher management. When you get into larger companies and you move out of owner-operated centres, very often you have decisions being made by a head office in another country.
So I think the picture of why quality is—