Canadian Heritage Committee on Nov. 1st, 2012

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

I call the meeting to order.

Good afternoon, everybody. We'll get started.

Our committee welcomes the guests we have here as witnesses.

We have Denis Talbot, television producer and host from MusiquePlus Inc. From Sheridan Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning, we have Avrim Katzman, professor. From BlackCherry Digital Media Inc., we have John Mark Seck, president.

By way of video conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, we have Dennis Chenard, director of industry relations for the Centre for Digital Media, and Lance Davis, chief financial officer for Slant Six Games and chair of the BC Interactive Group.

From the other side of the country, from Halifax, Nova Scotia, also by way of video conference, we have Michael Johnston, president and chief executive officer of TeamSpace.

I know the clerk has spoken to most of you about your opening remarks. Because of the number of witnesses, we will try to keep them to around seven minutes. In no particular order, for your opening remarks we will just follow the order we have on this sheet, starting with MusiquePlus.

After all individual opening remarks, we'll have a period of questions and answers for the remainder of the meeting.

I will say to the committee that I'm going to be leaving in about 20 minutes and our vice-chair, Mr. Nantel, will capably take over.

With that I turn it over to you, Mr. Talbot.

[Denis Talbot, Television Producer and Host, Video Games and New Technologies Expert, MusiquePlus Inc.]

Thank you very much.

Thank you for having me today. It is a real honour.

I am going to share a little bit about myself. I have been working in communications for about 30 years, including 14 at MusiquePlus where I still work today. I host M. Net. Over the past 14 years, I've had the opportunity to witness the growth of the video game industry in my area of the country, Montreal. I've seen companies like Ubisoft be created. At the helm of that company, there were many very enthusiastic people who were ready to throw themselves into this new adventure on this side of the ocean.

What I most noticed were young people who finished school, who had practically no experience on the labour market, who had just finished a course and who, overnight, found themselves leading projects. At the time, we called them "Lego" projects because they were based on children's games. Fifteen years later, however, the same people are in charge of studios. I am thinking of Cédric Orvoine, who is now in Toronto and who is in charge of Ubisoft's studio. He started out working in media relations.

Unfortunately, most people don't know much about video games, perhaps even some people sitting around this table. We're not just talking about 35-year-old guys who live in their basement or living room and eat cheezies while playing video games. These are people who are passionately creative.

I often see this in action since I also make documentaries on the making of video games. My latest is Deus Ex: Human Revolution, for Eidos Montreal. During four years, I followed the development of this game. I saw dramatic situations where people faced technological dead ends, but finally found ways to get around them. It's all because people who were there 14 years ago are now in key positions. They face situations that can be difficult, but they manage to get around pitfalls thanks to their experience.

People with a lot of experience are few and far between. I realized that. The person who worked at Ubisoft three years ago now works on another project at Eidos. He will work there for three years, then when another position opens up at BioWare in Vancouver, he will apply there. The departure of these people leaves gaping holes. They are important positions to fill.

I went to Paris recently, and I met people from Ubisoft France. They told me they would really like to come work in Canada. They had the impression that things are happening here, that it is a sort of Mecca for development, Hollywood for video games. I told them to come, but they told me that the snag was that they would have to wait 16 or 18 weeks.

If I had one suggestion to make to you, ladies and gentlemen, it would be to reduce that wait time a bit to allow those brains to come here. Yes, Canada is Hollywood for video games, but there are other countries around. I am thinking of England, among others. Last year at the MIGS, the Montreal International Games Summit, representatives from that country distributed bags to promote gaming in England. Their message was the following: "Come and work with us in England; we have great conditions, great job offers."

It is not a well-known field and we should do more to introduce it to, among others, the parents of these kids. I speak on it. I did a tour involving 90 schools as part of a series called Vigilance on the Net. We talked about cyberbullying and the jobs of the future in the video game industry. I realized that parents were completely out of their depth. They are scared of video games because if their children are playing, they aren't studying. For my part, I explain to them that in this field, we need architects, engineers, actors, computer technicians and all kinds of other people. The jobs are pretty much the same as in the film industry. In fact, movies and video games are incredibly similar. The difference is that if we create a game starring Lara Croft, we don't have to pay her 20 million dollars.

It is a great field that I would like to promote more. I don't know if governments could help us do so. For my part, I do it daily on my show. I try to convince people — and especially young people — to go into this field. People who work in this area will have work for the rest of their lives.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Merci.

Next we will hear from Avrim Katzman, from Sheridan College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning.

[Professor Avrim Katzman, Professor, Sheridan College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning]

Good afternoon. I'm Avrim Katzman. I'm a professor at Sheridan College, and I'm also the coordinator of our game design programs at the college.

I'll start with a little historical background.

Sheridan College was founded in 1967, as a result of Ontario legislation introduced in 1965 to create a post-secondary educational alternative to universities. Sheridan occupies campuses in the western greater Toronto area in Brampton, Mississauga, and Oakville.

From its inception, a key component of Sheridan was its art and design unit. The charter documents for Sheridan highlighted the role of art and design as central to its mission and stressed responsiveness to opportunity, flexibility, and integration with the economic growth of the region. This master vision well understood that applied arts encompassed many interrelated growing sectors, including animation.

The Sheridan animation program was launched in 1968 and, as a result of being targeted so early in the development of the college, has become renowned as a world leader. Locally and abroad, Sheridan and animation have become somewhat synonymous. Computer animation was added in 1985, and Sheridan's early recognition of the importance of investing in computer technology, both from an academic and enterprise perspective, was to have a major impact on the development of arts programming.

Sheridan animation graduates have gone on to great success in the fields of animation and special effects, having received industry recognition in the form of accolades and awards, including several Academy Awards and numerous nominations. In 2012, Animation Career Review named Sheridan's animation program as number one in the world.

In the last 10 to 15 years, we have witnessed a transition such that an increasing number of our graduates are finding employment in the games industry. Dramatically, in any given year, between 40% to 60% of our animation graduates may find themselves working for game companies. Recognition of the cultural significance of computer games and the talent requirement for industrial sustainability has motivated our development of a Bachelor of Applied Arts degree in game design, to be offered starting in September 2013.

As Canada's largest art school, Sheridan College carries a solid track record of innovation in applied learning and fundamental ties to industry. Sheridan is committed to developing strong industry and community partnerships that lead to social and economic growth within the region by offering vital solutions to industry problems through applied research and education.

Sheridan actively seeks opportunities for partnerships with industry leaders in Ontario, Canada, and North America. Sheridan's robust roster of programs, such as those that focus on digital media, gaming, and animation, provide many career pathways. Sheridan graduates are well known and sought after. For example, Corus Entertainment, based in Toronto, is one of Sheridan's largest benefactors, employers of graduates, and partners. Active participation from all levels of Corus employees and subsidiaries has made a significant difference to Sheridan's success as the number one school for animation education.

Corus was first in line to support Sheridan's expansion of our new animation centre, while at the same time renewing its commitment to support student mentoring, internships, and information sharing. They have endorsed many Sheridan initiatives and applications to the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Ontario Media Development Corporation. Corus has contributed over $400,000 in support to Sheridan.

Our relationship with long-time Sheridan industrial partner Walt Disney Animation Studios goes back to the inception of the program in 1968. In 1997, Disney established permanent scholarships for students in Sheridan's animation programs, and Disney continues to play an active role on program advisory committees and in supporting internships each summer.

Pixar Animation Studios, a division of Disney, supports software needs at Sheridan by contributing full licences to its proprietary software for animation students. As well, Pixar actively participates in mentoring Sheridan students, with many receiving coveted summer internships.

We've had a long-standing relationship with DreamWorks Animation. The DreamWorks Animation endowment, established in 2001, provides two annual scholarships for students in the Bachelor of Applied Arts in computer animation programs. Animators from DreamWorks take an active role in reviewing student portfolios and visit Sheridan regularly to mentor students. Annually, interns are placed at DreamWorks Studios in California.

Sheridan has identified digital media as a strategic priority for the college. Given its history of providing internationally renowned applied education in digital media and producing award-winning graduates in this field, the college has demonstrated its commitment to research and development in this area through its creation and support of the Screen Industries Research and Training Centre, known as SIRT.

Established in early 2010, SIRT is dedicated to fostering collaborative innovation with Ontario's film, digital game, and television industries. SIRT works with industry, academic, and government partners to conduct collaborative research and provide Canada's screen-based professionals with the training required to build this country's competitive advantage. SIRT is strategically located in the heart of Toronto's film district at Pinewood Toronto Studios, Canada's largest complex of sound stages. Using state-of-the-art technology, SIRT researchers work together with industry partners in a range of ways that are paramount to improving techniques and practices that reduce the time and cost of film, television, and game production.

In less than two years, SIRT has established itself as a significant contributor to screen-based sectors in Canada and has forged direct linkages between innovation in applied research and production practices. Continued sustainability requires support from industry partners to increase SIRT's research capacity and infrastructure. These partners include the 3D Camera Company, Panavision Canada, Vicon, the Directors Guild of Canada, Deluxe, and Side Effects Software, among others.

Several years ago, when we were first developing the curriculum for our Bachelor of Applied Arts in game design, Ubisoft Montreal announced that they were seeking to develop a presence in the Toronto area. We realized that having Ubisoft as a partner would be terrific for our program and for the industry in the Toronto area. We contacted Ubisoft in Montreal and arranged meetings there, and three of us from Sheridan flew up to Montreal to meet at Ubisoft headquarters. That started a relationship that continues and grows stronger to this day.

Ubisoft personnel have given talks and demonstrations to standing-room-only audiences at Sheridan College. Ubisoft has participated actively in our program advisory committees, and in September of this year, Sheridan and Ubisoft formally agreed to work together in defining joint research projects that will foster development of virtual production and performance capture techniques in Ontario and worldwide. This partnership provides a unique opportunity to collaborate and establish a global centre of excellence for research, curriculum, and training in interactive storytelling using virtual production practices.

Ubisoft Toronto will also work with Sheridan to maintain leading-edge curriculum in its Bachelor of Applied Arts in game design and graduate certificate in game level design programs, as well as programs for film, television, and animation that will benefit from performance capture and virtual production practices. This collaboration will help position Canada as a leading innovator in the development and adoption of new virtual production practices that are expected to become key to the future of interactive storytelling throughout the game, film, and television industries.

At Sheridan, we like to think of ourselves as being in the business of taking young peoples' dreams and turning them into careers, but of course we're only part of the equation. We can't do it on our own. We need strong participation from government and industry in order to accomplish this mission.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Thank you, Professor Katzman.

Next, from BlackCherry Digital Media, we have John Mark Seck, president. The floor is yours.

[John Mark Seck, President, BlackCherry Digital Media Inc.]

BlackCherry was formed in 2004. We're located here in Ottawa. It started pretty humbly, with three employees doing service work in interactive media. Our initial work was largely web-based educational service interactive work. The clientele were mainly Canadian film and television production companies and government.

In the past five years, we've made a decision. As we had some experience in game production, we decided to focus strictly on game production. We've had a few quite notable projects over the past three years. One was Path of the Elders, in 2009-2010, which was produced in partnership with Carleton University and the Mushkegowuk Cree. We created that educational game and the website Explore Treaty 9.

We produced Virtual Safety Village in partnership with the Safe Communities Partnership in Sault Ste. Marie. It is an online virtual world experience that allows kids to learn about home and outdoor safety.

Over the last two years we've worked on another project in partnership with Carleton University, called First Encounters. It is a game and educational project focused on aboriginal themes that gives kids the experience of what it was like to be one of the first people to arrive in Canada from Europe.

Really, the core of our work has been educational and game-based.

In 2010, I was approached by an investor, Dan Yang, who was trying to create essentially an iPad for kids. What she needed for that device was content. She hired our company to create the initial content for that device and then asked me to form another company as a branch of our company and to build that company out. That company has grown over the past year and a half to 40 employees. It's a pretty good story. That product is now for sale at retailers throughout North America. It's called VINCI.

Over the past two years, our company has really focused more on game production. We're now at 15 employees. We're growing pretty quickly right now. We have representation in California. We're in discussions with Ubisoft, Slimstown, and EA on casual game work. We're just completing work now with Beeline, Capcom, and Jim Henson.

In the last few years we've made the transition pretty much to gaming while we still carry on some of our interactive work. Gaming has certainly been the growth business for us and is where we see the most opportunity. We expect that we'll double our numbers over the next year.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Thank you, sir.

Next, from all the way out in beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia, at the Centre for Digital Media, we have Dennis Chenard and Lance Davis.

Go ahead, gentlemen.

[Dennis Chenard, Director, Industry Relations, Centre for Digital Media]

Hi, everyone.

I'm Dennis, with the Centre for Digital Media in Vancouver. It's a very interesting initiative. It's a 19-acre site that is shared among UBC, SFU, BCIT, and Emily Carr—four of our leading universities out in Vancouver—with a core focus on digital media. It's the Centre for Digital Media.

One of our main operations is a master's of digital media program, which was established in 2007 mainly to service the game industry. We had a program that came out of industy for industry. Industry leaders, in working with the premier's technology task force, identified that this sector was one that was growing at a pace that identified a significant demand in having trained leaders who understand digital media, can become great content producers, and work together. With the establishment of this program, we have managed to recruit talent from around the world. About 60% of the students who come into this program are from the international community, and about 90% of those students are choosing to stay in Vancouver when having the option.

Our gaming community has, over the years, changed its focus a little bit. This is going to look at it from a bit of a competitive standpoint.

Vancouver has seen a bit of a decline with a number of major studios, at least on the triple-A side, that have been doing business in Vancouver. That said, we have had a number of smaller companies within the casual and mobile space start up. However, we have also lost a number of our graduates back to the international community because they are choosing to pursue opportunities abroad. I have five students who just moved to Berlin last year.

One of the areas we are really interested in, at least from the B.C. perspective, is continued growth and support for the game industry, both at the triple-A level and with the emerging companies.

Another factor I have recognized at international events is that Canada seems to be very provincially represented, but not so much nationally. With that, we have a strong partnership with industry. One of my colleagues on the industry side, Lance, is with Slant Six Games, one of our larger game companies in town, and is also a representative of BCI. I will let him speak to that in a second.

The reason I am interested in this conversation today is that any time we can have a discussion as to what is going to better position Canada's digital media strategy and employment opportunities for young graduates and talent, I am all for that.

To speak to B.C.'s state of the industry, I will pass the microphone to Lance.

[Lance Davis, Chief Financial Officer, Slant Six Games, Chair of BC Interactive Group, Centre for Digital Media]

Thanks very much, Dennis.

It's a privilege to be here today and to be part of the interview and feedback process, so thanks very much for that.

Also, I'm quite pleased to see that the video game development industry—and the digital technology industry overall, the entertainment industry—is recognized as part of our Canadian heritage. It's definitely part of our culture.

I'll talk about the macro level for a second.

Last year, in 2011, globally the industry generated over $55 billion in revenue. That is games sales, hardware sales, and all the peripheral services. That is a very serious number.

On a more micro level, here in British Columbia we have fallen off from being the number one video game development hub in the country. We are now hanging on tenuously to second place. Our friends, nos amis in Quebec, are now in the number one place, thanks very much to their tax credit program.

Certain of the provinces have reacted by implementing these tax credit programs and have created a very uneven competitive space. There has actually been an exodus of very well-qualified people from British Columbia, unfortunately, to other geographies to seek jobs, so at BC Interactive, working in conjunction with our friends at DigiBC and with the good help of people such as Dennis and the Centre for Digital Media, we're striving to hold our position now, to regain our position as number one, and also to cultivate the industry globally. BC Interactive represents the video game industry here in B.C. We're working to unify and then to “evangelize” our position.

Currently in the video game development industry here there are approximately 4,000 people. That number, unfortunately, is diminishing. Again, we need to take constructive steps to halt that from happening.

On a more constructive level, we feel that there is ample opportunity. I like to portray it as a perfect storm scenario. B.C. currently has all of the necessary ingredients not only to regenerate and to grow our hub back to its former status but also to remain a competitive force globally. We do deal with people all over the world. At Slant Six Games we've dealt with publishers in Asia, the U.S., Germany, and beyond, and that is the nature of our industry. It's a wonderful thing that in Canada we get to provide our services to those people.

If we could, we would like to see some constructive steps toward ironing out the uneven competitive environment in place now that has some provinces offering 40% in tax credits. We recently campaigned successfully for the implementation of a digital tax credit. Unfortunately, it's 17.5%, and it hasn't served to help us protect our workforce and to stop the erosion.

We would very much like to see the implementation of a federal digital tax credit. That would be extremely helpful and might take some of the pressure off provinces to try to implement ad hoc programs, if you will. I say that with all due respect.

It's more than ad hoc; Quebec has become number one in less than four years, and the contribution of our industry to the GDP in that province is absolutely staggering. At 4,000 people here in B.C., our GDP contribution to the province is well in excess of $500 million annually.

I was a little bit chagrined to see the Jenkins report and the adoption of some of the recommendations from it whereby the SR and ED program was rolled back. I understand that some of the assets related to that will be going towards IRAP and perhaps some venture capital programs, but please understand that our people don't participate in those programs. We would perhaps need to see the SR and ED program get a bit more proactive that way.

My peer, Mr. Talbot, alluded to easing up some of the immigration policies, shortening the time for application and bringing good talent in, and perhaps offering a tax holiday to attract certain people from other geographies and other territories to our good country. We would also like to see prioritizing of training and education extend to the digital realm and video game design, art, audio, etc. Many great disciplines are involved in the typical evolution of a video game these days.

When you're looking at regulations for the CRTC, how about a more robust set of rules for our broadband? Games are very much going digital and online. That, in fact, is the new generation, so anything that could bolster that change would be very much appreciated.

On the timing of the LMO for people immigrating in, if we could do anything constructive to reduce that, it would be great.

I think our time is close to drawing to an end, so again, thanks very much for allowing us to be a part of this. We welcome any questions whatsoever, and beyond today's event we remain very much available to you.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Pierre Nantel]

Thank you very much, Mr. Davis.

We will now go to Mr. Johnston, from TeamSpace, in Halifax.

Mr. Johnston, you have the floor.

[Michael Johnston, President and Chief Executive Officer, TeamSpace]

Good afternoon to members of the committee and to the other invited guests.

Thank you very much for inviting me and allowing me to join you today from a very rainy Halifax via video conference.

I'm founder and president of TeamSpace. We're a development studio based here in Halifax. TeamSpace maintains a full-time staff of roughly 80 people, the majority of whom live here in Nova Scotia, with some staff in Toronto, the United States, and England. Roughly 12 years old, TeamSpace has grown steadily, having been recognized five times as one of the fastest-growing companies in Atlantic Canada.

A native Nova Scotian, I founded TeamSpace after returning from a degree at Harvard and an IT career in Boston. I'm very proud that we've been able to build a world-class business here in the Maritimes.

TeamSpace's core business is software engineering for interactive projects. Like many companies in this region, and I suspect across Canada, we've built our business on a mix of services contracts and original intellectual property game development.

We do very little work on the large, blockbuster-style console video games. Instead, we target and service the other huge and growing segments of the entertainment software industry: interactive websites, web-based casual games, online multiplayer virtual worlds, social games on platforms like Facebook, and mobile games on smart phones and tablets. That strategy of building many smaller games and projects has allowed us to better manage our human resources, I would say. It's helped us to retain a stable and steadily growing pool of talent rather than having an up-and-down flow of staffing for large projects.

Our work in the entertainment software industry primarily targets large media companies and broadcasters that own and license popular intellectual property and characters and that drive much of the online entertainment revenue through established advertising business models. International brands such as Nickelodeon, MTV, Sony Pictures, Fox, and NBC all buy software engineering services and games from us. Nearly 100% of our business comes from outside Nova Scotia, and most of it comes from outside Canada.

Our services and products are highly exportable around the world, which drives a direct benefit to our region. I would argue that the entertainment software industry is a key component of the shifting export economy in Canada. In support of that argument, I would note that TeamSpace was recognized as Nova Scotia's Exporter of the Year last year.

As an exporter, however, we are fully exposed to currency effects. The rising Canadian dollar has had a direct negative impact on our profitability and our ability to be competitive on the world stage. We have world-class talent here in Canada, but we have seen our traditional cost advantage erode dramatically due to our rising dollar.

I mentioned our world-class talent. While the large game development centres in Montreal, Vancouver, and Toronto have traditionally received much well-earned attention, other regions of the country, like Atlantic Canada, should not be overlooked.

The success of the film and animation industries here in Atlantic Canada over the past few decades has built a strong base of talent in art and design, sound production, and acting talent. Those industries, particularly animation and including a number of graduates I know locally from Sheridan College, have faced significant challenges in recent years in trying to remain vibrant and to reinvent themselves in the global economy. The rise of the game development industry has provided a new outlet to apply those skills and to keep that experienced talent employed here in the region.

At TeamSpace, we recognized early that software programming talent is often hard to find for many studios. We focused on building a concentration of programmers in Halifax for use on our game projects and to fulfill services projects for larger studios and for our media clients. For the life of the company, though, finding enough skilled programmers and project leads has always been our greatest challenge.

Nova Scotia is home to many outstanding colleges and universities, many of which are adjusting their curricula to graduate students with the skills needed in this industry. Their doors are open, but from my perspective, there aren't enough students enrolling or enough graduates staying here. I believe more work can be done by all of us to make Canada's youth better aware of the career prospects in this industry, to support them financially as they consider enrolling in post-secondary computer science and game-design programs, and to incent them to seek employment in all regions of Canada, including Atlantic Canada. A good mobile game can be built with a relatively small team. With the right incentives, we could see many more successful studios in all corners of the country.

Our ability to grow our staff has also been impacted by immigration challenges, some of which have already been spoken about by other members of the invited panel. Our industry moves at a brisk pace. When we need to add skilled personnel to help us fulfill a new contract or to complete an existing game, we often need people in a matter of weeks or even days.

A few years ago, we were able to look to immigrants to help us fill that need, but over the past couple of years, changes to temporary foreign IT worker guidelines have slowed the work permit process to a pace that is, frankly, untenable for us. That is particularly unfortunate, because often the immigrants we tend to need bring critical experience as mid- to senior-level project leads and game designers. Those experienced workers are much harder to find in Canada—most of them are busy—and it can take years of investment to grow them in-house. Those people have a multiplier effect. One new senior staff member may open up an opportunity to hire an entire new team of junior-level graduates to work under their leadership.

As I sit within sight of the Irving shipyard, I would also like to suggest that investment in the entertainment software industry can have benefits in other sectors, beyond traditional game development. For our part at TeamSpace, we have found that our skills and experience in programming, art, and game design translate very well into fields that rely increasingly on complex training and simulation, such as aerospace, defence, and health care. Similarly, our investments in game-related technical R and D have yielded dividends beyond that sector.

Projects in both traditional gaming and interactive simulation benefit from the government's investments in tax credit programs. As a studio with a heavy focus on software engineering, many of our projects contain elements that quality for the federal SR and ED tax credit, which has helped us further innovate and remain relevant in the global digital marketplace.

Tax credits focused more specifically on digital media and gaming, as we've already heard, have to date been administered provincially, with notable differences across the country. Because of that provincial silo effect, as it currently stands, we have a strong disincentive to hire people in other provinces or to engage partners in other parts of Canada, since we can only claim credits against labour resident in our home province. A national digital media tax credit strategy could help to unify the industry and incent us all to source talent from across Canada first, before looking abroad for potentially cheaper offshore resources.

I would close with a request, which echoes comments we heard earlier, that our government continue to invest in programs that support Canada's telecom infrastructure. The gaming and digital media industries are moving at a breakneck pace toward online and wireless usage models. The demand for stable, ubiquitously available wired and wireless bandwidth is only going to grow, and grow fast. Things like high definition mobile video, anywhere/anytime gaming, and wireless commerce are becoming our new normal. We as a country need to have an infrastructure and a digital ecosystem that aligns with those demands if we hope to remain relevant to our target customers of tomorrow.

Thank you very much. I welcome any questions.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Pierre Nantel]

Thank you very much, Mr. Johnston.

Thank you for having shared your experience with us. As Mr. Talbot said at the beginning of the meeting, we tend to know little about this industry. However, we learn a little more at each meeting.

I will give the floor to my colleagues soon, but I want to say our witnesses all seem to agree on some issues. We've heard about immigration-related problems for specialists in some fields, specialized education to ensure our young people have access to this area, and subsidy needs for research and development.

Mr. Talbot, you raised the fact that this industry has created a kind of Hollywood for video games. It is the critical mass of all the studios in Hollywood that has made it what it is, made it legendary.

I will now give the floor to Mr. Young.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us physically and online, as well.

I'd like to start with Mr. Katzman, from Sheridan College. Thank you for coming today. We've actually never met before, I don't think, but I'm so glad to meet you here.

[Prof. Avrim Katzman]

I've seen you at the college several times.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Yes, I've been at the college a lot, but we've never met. I would like to come and visit some time.

Can I ask you just a few quick questions?

First of all, how many graduates has Sheridan sent out to the industry so far who are ready to hit the road running and help it grow?

[Prof. Avrim Katzman]

So far, over 40 years.... I haven't counted heads. We graduate, in animation and computer animation, approximately 150 students a year. Our anticipated intake for our Bachelor of Applied Arts in game design will initially be 75 students a year, growing to 100 students a year, probably over a two-year period, so in a four-year program, at any one time we'll have over 600 animation students on campus.

We're doing our best.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

They must be pretty thrilled when you come in and say, “I have what you need.”

You mentioned partnerships, and I know Sheridan is superb with partnerships. I was glad to see you had a partnership with Ubisoft, with the growth they've had.

How do you make sure your students are graduating and meeting the current needs? Is that what you accomplish through partnerships? They come in and say, “Here's what we need”, and...?

[Prof. Avrim Katzman]

Yes. Part of the ministerial mandate for all community college courses in Ontario is that they have a program advisory committee that's substantially made up of industry representatives. They report not to me or to the academic faculty but directly to our board of governors on the state of the program, its currency, and its relevance to them as an industry. That helps us stay sharp and keep current.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Does Sheridan call the students to follow up to see if they have jobs, or do you just know they do because they all talk?

[Prof. Avrim Katzman]

No. There is a formal process. There's the KPI process, instituted by the Ministry of Education in Ontario, that requires us to follow up.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

We have 8% unemployment in Ontario, mostly because 50,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost. We're going to try to get some back, but some will never come back. This is an industry that's helping replace those opportunities for the young people.

You've heard some people say today, and in previous sessions we've heard companies say, that when they need a senior programmer, they need to bring them from China or Korea or Japan or somewhere and they need to get them here fast.

What can the federal government do to help Sheridan College and Centennial College train those people and get them out into the field so that Canadian students who are already here get the jobs?

[Prof. Avrim Katzman]

I think by definition senior people are people who have graduated and had at least several years of industry experience.

What we can do to grow these senior people domestically is to support the industry. A great number of our graduates leave the country for jobs.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Do you know what percentage leave the country?

[Prof. Avrim Katzman]

I couldn't tell you offhand.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Is that just because they great offers, or better offers than they could at home?