Canadian Heritage Committee on Dec. 11th, 2012

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Are you opposed to the idea that we should have an immigration program that leads newcomers to get good, high-paying jobs in the Canadian economy?

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Excuse me, but this not what the sector is talking about. What we're trying to do with this study is understand what their needs are—not talk over their needs, not talk around their needs, but try to listen to their needs. That's why we're here.

I'd like now to—

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

They need talented people, and we're offering to bring them here on a permanent basis. I don't see how they would be opposed to that.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Go ahead, Jinny.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Minister, we actually encourage and support a way to bring people here as permanent residents, but we're also seeing a trend in the service industry specifically, especially in many of the fast-food outlets, where there seems to be a greater granting of LMOs over the last number of years. It's hard for me to fathom that those are skill-oriented shortages leading to the granting of visas in that area.

So—

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Go ahead, Mr. Calandra.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

On a point of order, Mr. Chair, I'm not sure how much time she has left, but it would be very helpful if we would just stick to the video game industry and not the fast-food industry—

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Well, on that—

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Well, in the—

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Ms. Sims, if you can wrap up in.... It's 4:30 now, so just pose your question quickly so the minister can get in a quick response, and we'll move to our next panel.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Thank you. I will.

Minister, I just want to reiterate our support for a temporary foreign workers program that takes into account Canadians first for the jobs, and that has the government investing in growing the Canadian expertise and then making sure Canadians have access to those jobs before we go looking for workers overseas. Are you committed to the same?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Yes, absolutely, I'm committed to the same.

I just would point out, since you've asked me repeatedly to provide access to permanent residency for all temporary foreign workers, that your colleague down the table now seems to object to granting pathways to permanent residency for high-tech computer gamers. I—

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

I did not hear that, Mr. Minister.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

You can't have it both ways. Now you're against low-skilled foreign workers coming into the service industry or the hospitality industry when they get a positive LMO, but you also at the same time want to give them permanent residency. I'm just getting more confused by—

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Minister—

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Thank you—

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

—I've stipulated the NDP's position.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Thank you, Ms. Sims.

Thank you, Minister Kenney.

Thank you to the departmental officials for your attendance here.

Thanks for contributing to our study.

We will now take a two-minute recess and move to our next panel.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

We'll get started. We're scheduled to wrap up here at 5:30. That gives us some time for our next three witnesses.

Welcome to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. I think some of you were here during the testimony from 3:30 to 4:30.

We have with us Silicon Sisters Interactive, with Brenda Gershkovitch, chief executive officer; from Gamercamp, we have Jaime Woo, festival director and co-founder; and from the University of Alberta, we have Sean Gouglas, director and associate professor, interdisciplinary studies, faculty of arts.

Welcome to the three of you. We look forward to your contribution to our committee's work.

We will begin with opening comments, if you have them. We'll start with Ms. Gershkovitch.

[Brenda Gershkovitch, Chief Executive Officer, Silicon Sisters Interactive]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you very much for having me here today. I'm excited that you're looking thoroughly into the video game industry. It's a very important industry in Canada.

We are the third-largest video game development country in the world, and if you look at that by population, we're number one. It is something we have been doing for a long time, which we do very well.

It's a wonderful, exciting industry to work in, I will share with you, because it's an industry of so much change, and it's an industry that is diverse across our country. The experience of developers in Vancouver, for example, is quite different from the experience of developers in Montreal and Toronto, two other very strong hubs in the country.

I started in the video game industry in 2005. I came out of health care, believe it or not. I was working at the Canadian Cancer Society and was looking for an entrepreneurial experience and decided to jump into video games. It seems a bit of a stretch. It was, but it was an interesting decision. At that time we were able to build up a small studio called Deep Fried Entertainment into a 45-person studio.

Things were very hot in the sector from 2005 to 2008 at the time that I had that studio, and we did extremely well. The business model at the time was really one of doing work-for-hire projects. The value in video games, I would argue, is largely in the intellectual property, in the creation of characters and story and an identifiable adventure world. If you think about intellectual property, think Star Wars or Assassin's Creed or something in which there are very “relatable” characters that people fall in love with and want to be a part of.

During the 2005-2008 timeframe, most of the intellectual property was held elsewhere, and Canadian companies were doing work for hire. There were still wonderful, high-paying jobs, with lots of opportunity for growth in the sector at the time, but we weren't necessarily owning the value, a situation I have witnessed change since I have had my second studio.

Things shifted about 2008, and those lucrative contracts coming out of California somewhat dried up. We still have a lot of very strong studios in Canada working in the console area, largely concentrated in Montreal. The change in Vancouver was interesting, because our tax credits were somewhat lower than those we saw out east. What happened, in my opinion, as a result was largely that we shifted from being an area focused on work for hire and working with large foreign corporations to one in which a very strong entrepreneurial spirit has developed, and you see a springing up of many small companies doing independent projects.

I personally find this very exciting, because we get to own those intellectual properties. The potential for these small studios to grow into large companies has never been higher, in my opinion. It is a wonderful time to invest in this part of our economy. There is tremendous opportunity for the future.

If I might add one other small note from a personal perspective, for a very long time video games have been the realm of young men, and that has changed and is changing. Video games are for everyone. Video games are used in very many contexts that are different from those we've seen in the past. We can use video games in education and in health. Video games are being used by grandparents to connect with their grandchildren, and we call them leap-frog gamers: they go straight to their iPads and are doing it so they can connect with younger generations.

Please, when you think about video games, don't necessarily think about that stereotypical person in the basement playing, because things have really changed and continue to change by leaps and bounds.

Thank you very much for your attention.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Thank you.

Next is Mr. Woo.

[Jaime Woo, Festival Director and Co-Founder, Gamercamp]

Hi. I'm Jaime Woo, and I'm going to talk a little bit about Toronto and the video game scene there and a little bit about the festival I co-founded, called Gamercamp.

We started Gamercamp in November 2009, so it is in its fourth year. In our most recent festival, which happened just a month ago, we had an attendance of 1,280 across all of our events.

What makes us special in Gamercamp is that we have inspirational TED-like talks—

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

One quick second. There is a point of order here.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

I would like to request unanimous consent to distribute Mr. Woo's brochure, which is only in English. It's not a problem for us to read it, even though it's only in English. Do all the committee members agree?

I think it would help out your presentation if we could all see it.

[Jaime Woo]

That would be fabulous. That's great. We don't have the resources to translate it, unfortunately.