Human Resources Committee on April 4th, 2012

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Okay. What guarantees would Canada have, for example, if we were to change this and put the federal IT workers program back in? What I would want to hear from you is what the plan is for Canadian talent, for homegrown talent. I understand that there's this near-term issue, but what's the long-term plan?

[Jason Kee]

That's a great question. I was focusing in my testimony on what we frankly regard as an urgent and critical issue, which is about filling the intermediate and senior jobs and the steps the government can take right now, but there also clearly needs to be a longer-term process—my colleagues touched on it in much greater detail, frankly—to ensure that we're producing the necessary graduates.

If you actually just do the math, our industry is growing at 17%. We're at 16,000 right now. The schools across the country are producing about 11,000 graduates per year. If you do the math, you'll see we can't keep up. Even if we could employ every single one, we're still not going to be able to keep pace with the growth.

Consequently, we need to be considering programs that essentially are producing higher rates of graduates and, also, that the graduates we access, particularly on the technical side, are the same graduates that we've been talking about.... It's the issue about the lack of students going into the STEM occupations and a lot of the technical occupations, where there is a dearth in terms of video game development just as there is for other ICT sectors.

For us, we have the additional aspect that we actually straddle both: we're the conventional ICT sector, but we're also in content. We also employ digital artists and graphic designers and so forth, so we actually need to be looking at making sure those graduates are being employed and trained in basically the right numbers to satisfy the demands of the industry. We have shortages in those kinds of positions equal to the shortages we have on the tech side.

Then there's also the aspect, which I think we also touched on, of management and business skills and the soft skills as well. We have seen an explosion in Canada's small and medium-sized enterprises in the gaming sector, just as we've seen across the ICT sector, which basically means that you have more independent developers that are wearing multiple hats. They're not specializing so much anymore. They're doing everything, which means that they actually have to be running the business, developing the codes, and doing the digital art, all of it themselves.

Often people with technical capabilities don't necessarily have the soft skills—the communication skills, the team-building skills—and looking to how to incorporate that kind of curriculum in a technical curriculum is also something that's critically important.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you, Mr. Cash and Mr. Kee.

Your time is up. It was certainly an interesting exchange.

Mr. Butt, go ahead.

[Brad Butt, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Thanks to all of you for being here.

I'm going to start with a more generic question so that each of the witnesses from the different organizations has a chance to respond. Then, if I have time, Mr. Chairman, I might drill down on one or two specific questions in the time we have.

Let me start with this. Are there any highly specialized skills within your industry sectors that may not be accurately reflected at the present time in the broad statistical categories of what Statistics Canada and others come up with for computer professionals, or computer technicians, as we would know them? Can you give us some sense of that?

I'm not a tech person at all. There are even some days when my staff don't think I can work my BlackBerry properly, so I'm learning on this, too, but I know that this is a very important emerging economy in Canada. There are going to be thousands and thousands of jobs in the future in these areas. As one member of Parliament, I want to get my head around what skills are required, what's there, what these jobs entail, and what we need to prepare for, because we know that there are going to be thousands of Canadian jobs in these categories in the future.

Mr. Anani, could you go first? Thank you.

[Namir Anani]

Maybe I'll start to attack your question.

Clearly, it's a very valid remark that you're making, because the current national occupation code that we have, which represents approximately 14 classifications, doesn't take account of the future and evolving environment. I talked about the SMEs, and we talked about the creative content and all the mobility. That environment requires more business skills and more entrepreneurial skills.

Now, the business analyst concept is not even reflected in that environment, so to be successful in that while going forward, not in a Canadian but a global environment, it's important to have that reflection, and there are others. I think we would be happy to provide you with a report we produced on this environment that is specifically targeted to the business analyst needs going forward.

[Brad Butt, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

That would be great. I'm sure the clerk would appreciate getting that. We can have it as part of our summary.

Mr. Kee, do you want to go next?

[Jason Kee]

Yes, absolutely.

Actually, it's a great question, because particularly from a video game industry perspective, it's all of them. We have a critical issue. Only in 2012 has the North American industry classification system been updated to acknowledge the existence of video game developers as a category. Even so, we're still spread out among a number of independent categories.

If you're developing video games and you're also doing the publication of video games for packaged goods—the kind you actually buy at the retail store—you're in a different classification from producing them for online delivery, which creates complications in terms of tracking.

Because of this issue, StatsCan has actually not tracked our industry as independent of the ICT sector. We have no idea what the long-term growth is, absent our own independent research as an industry association, because StatsCan hasn't tracked it.

We have similar challenges with the national occupation codes. The codes are very broad and very general. They don't drill down. You could fold game development into at least five different classifications, depending on the specifics of what they happen to be doing.

As well, often they're very dated. The closest ones, “computer programmer” and “interactive media developer”, include developing for CDs, DVDs, and game cartridges. These are forms of media in the games industry that basically have barely been used for the past 10 years.

Clearly some of the codes are still in need of updating. We're certainly not adequately captured, and it's been challenging, to say the least.

[Brad Butt, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Thank you.

Ms. Peters, did you want to add something?

[Avvey Peters]

The only thing I would add to what my colleagues have said is that the ICT industry, and the digital media industry in particular, is moving at such a pace that it's really difficult for these things to keep up.

When we do recruitment events, we travel across the continent and we update our list of the hottest skills in demand every three months. There are careers now in the tech sector in the Waterloo region that didn't exist five years ago. Mobile applications development was really not on anybody's radar. I think the pace of change in the industry has really driven this divide between what the national occupation codes know to be true and what we're seeing day to day in the industry.

[Brad Butt, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

I'm from the city of Mississauga, and we're very proud of our new Sheridan College campus. It opened up officially just this past September and has many students in high-tech studies. Computer animation is huge. I've talked to the president of the college and I'm thrilled with the programming going on there and the graduates who will eventually come out of it.

Here's my question for you as representatives of those companies that would be hiring these graduates. We always have this dichotomy of, “Well, yes, they've graduated, and they have a skill set, but they have no practical experience, so we're not going to hire them.”

Mr. Kee, you mentioned earlier your frustration over labour market opinions, because you'd like to get from other countries the people with three to five years of experience and get them working immediately for your member companies.

We always have this difficulty of what we do with our new graduates, who are ready to go but don't have that work experience. What can you offer to the committee to help us in our deliberations to make sure that those new graduates who leave the Sheridan College campus in Mississauga on graduation day can start to work in your industry the next day? What can we do? Where are the areas at the federal level where we can be more helpful in making sure that the transition happens so that those new graduates are getting a job literally the next day, when you're telling me there are thousands of jobs available across the country in these sectors?

Did you want to start, Ms. Peters?

Will that then probably be it for me, Mr. Chairman?

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Yes.

[Avvey Peters]

It's an excellent question.

I think probably the key for new grads is that experiential learning component. In the Waterloo region, we really try to leverage the cooperative education model, making those connections between industries and students right from their first year of college or university. It's the opportunity for a student to go into a workplace and to compare what they're learning in the classroom or the lab with what's actually happening in the industry that they want to connect with.

To go back to a point that I tried to make earlier, I think anything we can do to encourage higher adoption of cooperative education by industry and higher participation in cooperative education by students will probably help close that gap.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Mr. Kee, do you want to make a remark?

[Jason Kee]

Sure, and I would essentially agree with that.

As I indicated, what we have found is that hiring at the junior levels, because we are basically a team-based industry, is typically not as critical an issue, simply by virtue of the fact that we actually need the juniors. We need the recent graduates at the junior levels to be doing the junior-level work, the grunt work, and then they work their way up the ladder. We always have, essentially, opportunities.

There is an issue in the industry, which is a longer-term issue, with respect to the mismatch of the training that's happening in some of the institutions and the skills that the graduates are coming out with and whether or not they're truly qualified. It's a much longer kind of process to try to produce that. Co-ops are, again, a critical issue. Frankly, for our industry, practical experience and a portfolio of work are more important than the degree. That's what the employers want to see, so any program that is constructed to provide that is going to give their graduates a huge leg up in terms of actual jobs in the industry.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you.

Go ahead, Mr. Anani.

[Namir Anani]

From our point of view, we believe there should be more internship and co-op programs initiated by the industry. A closer focus on attracting that talent early in the game, even at the high school level, and attracting them into the ICT domain is going to be key going forward.

We have initiated a pilot in over 100 schools across the country at the moment, provincially approved, on ICT, to provide not only technical skills but business analytical skills. It's gaining some great support both from academia and the industry. I think that aspect should be enlarged. We should be looking at it from a larger perspective across Canada.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you for that.

We'll now turn to Ms. Hughes.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Thank you very much.

I'm glad that you talked about the practical experience challenges, because we've heard on a number of occasions during the study that no matter what profession is out there, it seems there is a difficulty in people who have the qualifications getting the job because they don't have that experience, so I'm assuming, based on what you've said, that training experience needs to be an integral part of the education component.

I have a variety of questions here.

Ms. Peters, you talked about the declining enrolment in the tech industry. Can you elaborate? Is there a void somewhere?

I'm trying to get some sense of how the relationship between the colleges and your organizations is working out with respect to making sure people are getting the proper training and that people are being enrolled. I know you talked about secondary education in some of your presentations as well.

[Avvey Peters]

We have a partnership with an organization in our community called the Business and Education Partnership. Their focus is on helping young students from grades 7 to 12 in making more informed career choices.

What we find is that the biggest influence on the career choices of students tends to be either their peers, their parents, or their guidance counsellors. Their parents and their guidance counsellors don't have an up-to-the-minute view of what career opportunities are available.

I can give you the anecdotal view of this, but what we hear when we go into classrooms and meet with kids and talk to them is that they don't realize what opportunities are available for them that line up with science, technology, engineering, and math. They don't think of those things as cool paths of study leading to cool careers.

As a result, part of the work that we're trying to do in a community sense is showing them what's possible, so we take young entrepreneurs, 20 to 25 years old, into high school classrooms, get them to talk about their latest activity—their new Internet start-up, the application they're building for a BlackBerry or an iPhone—and get kids to start thinking about something they can pursue once they graduate.

Part of it is really an exposure to industry in a way that resonates with them.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Mr. Anani, you're the ICTC. I noticed that you're one of the sector councils, and you're funded in part by the federal government. Have you got notice? I know that some of the sector councils got notice that their funding is being scaled back. I'm just wondering if you're one of those.

[Namir Anani]

That's a fact for all sector councils.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

How much of your funding relied on the federal government, and what will the impact of this be?

[Namir Anani]

Some of the funding has been affected. I joined the organization approximately three and a half months ago, but I know that it took effect approximately a year ago.

We're looking at other sources of funding from the industry and we're making inroads. The purpose of our presentation today is in terms of what we need going forward, so we're not looking at the funding aspect.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

I was just trying to get some sense, because obviously you provide some important information on how to try to move forward. That funding model has been there. I'm wondering if other partners are coming to the table. You're saying you're still looking into that.

[Namir Anani]

Sure.