Human Resources Committee on April 4th, 2012

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

Okay.

Do your organizations have an idea how many temporary foreign workers are being hired across the board at this point? Specifically, how many are being brought in or how many applications are being submitted? I want to get some sense as to what the needs are.

[Avvey Peters]

I'm sorry, I don't have a sense of that.

[Jason Kee]

I don't have an overall sense. I hear more from the companies with respect to the challenges they have, rather than the overall numbers. The sense I also have is that it's not overwhelmingly large, because again it's for specific positions as they come up, and to meet specific needs, which is why essentially we're looking for a fast and flexible arrangement.

The intention is also that we just want to bring some in as a temporary measure, have them train their juniors, and then two years later be left with a bunch of people who are now at the intermediate level who can handle the job on their own. They tend to leave after a few years.

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

Some of the questions I had were answered previously, but the other piece that I had was this: are you coordinating with high schools and the provincial government? I'm trying to get some sense of that as well.

At the elementary level, you mentioned grade 7. I was speaking to my son in French a few years before he started playing games. He learned to speak and to read English playing these video games. Are you doing some outreach there, or is there a role for the federal government to play in getting out some communication? I'm trying to get some sense here, because I think the earlier you educate.... My son is certainly very good on the tech side, but he's going into biomedical science, so....

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Please give a short answer, if you could. Go ahead, Mr. Anani.

[Namir Anani]

I think education at the early stages of the game is very important. I did highlight that. In high school it's very important to give them not only the technical but also the business and analytical communication skills. Part of our role, as I mentioned, is that at the moment we have programs trying to cater to that and build industry support into that as much as academic support. We do that with over 100 schools across the country, with a high success rate of students going into higher education, but also being attracted by the industry, so I encourage it. It's a very important dimension to building the skill sets of tomorrow.

However, I think industry has an important role to promote in terms of the needs of tomorrow, building some internship co-op programs, and starting that cycle as early as possible.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you.

Does anyone else want to comment on that?

Go ahead, Mr. Kee.

[Jason Kee]

Briefly, no, we have not, at least not in a cohesive way on a national basis. There have been a number of regional or more specific initiatives. Often we find a lot of this happens with individual companies that form individual relationships with their communities. They will actually then do outreach and start to build those kinds of relationships. They foster people coming in, viewing them as long-term investments, long-term people who may come to work at the company.

One thing we can definitely do is look at video games as an entry point into the broader STEM skills. STEM skills by themselves tend not to be the most exciting area to attract young people. Video games are a way of getting them into it, and they involve all of the STEM skills.

Young people relate to video games. Once they understand they can actually be building them, they tend to get much more attracted to these kinds of skill sets.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

That's a good point.

We will now move to Mr. Shory. Go ahead.

[Devinder Shory, Conservative, Calgary Northeast, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, witnesses, for coming to this committee. It will definitely help us to figure out solutions, or at least to hear from you with regard to the solutions we are all looking for.

As far as this BlackBerry is concerned, I know for sure that I don't know all of the features. I can play with this and then forget all of the other software. This new technology is developing faster than we breathe, I would say.

Canada is facing shortages of skilled work labour. We all know this. That is why the focus of our study is to garner information on how to deal with these issues. This government is working with businesses like yours to figure out how to meet their needs for skills and labour in the future, and in the short term as well. Also, it's looking for some ideas on solutions that will focus on providing more timely and precise information to job seekers on the skills they need to find meaningful employment.

I'll throw out a couple questions and I would like to hear your comments. My number one question would be whether you feel educational programs are currently providing students with the most relevant and digital skills necessary to function in the software field. Depending on whether it's yes or no, then I'd like you to highlight any particular strategies within your industry to address skills shortages you anticipate stemming from Canada's aging population.

[Namir Anani]

I'll start. There is another dimension that is going to compound the premise of our presentation in saying that we know the demand far exceeds supply and by 2016 there will be 160,000 jobs that will need to be filled. It's the emerging sectors of the ICT environment—the mobile, the cloud—and the creative content environment is going to add to this.

With regard to how you build the educational environment to provide that supply going forward, it's important to have a finger on the pulse of this and to have a tighter loop between industry needs and education needs. It all starts with better demand forecasting in order to know what that environment is going to look like.

There has been a lot of discussion on this environment. That's where we're suggesting that in the next number of years, for us to compete in an environment that's becoming very global—many countries have a first-move advantage on that—we need to have a mechanism of being able to forecast the jobs of the future in collaboration with industry, academia, and others.

We need to connect that with academia to measure it and point to programs that are successful. We need to help a sector of the industry that we believe should be nurtured, which is the SMEs of the future. These are the industries of the future for us.

A mechanism of better prediction of that environment is why we are suggesting that perhaps there should be a national task force to manage it. We would be more than happy to help in that environment and provide that to academia to build the workforce of tomorrow.

[Jason Kee]

On the first question, my answer is, unhelpfully, going to be that it depends. It depends, actually, entirely on the individual program. What we find is that in industry, you have programs running out of Sheridan or U of Waterloo or the Great Northern Way Campus over in B.C., which is basically a collaboration between Emily Carr and UBC and SFU, that produce exceptional graduates of exceptional talent who have absolutely no difficulty immediately finding jobs and basically have the skill set you need.

There are also a number of programs out there that don't necessarily produce graduates who are, frankly, that employable. There are always exceptions to the rule. It depends. Part of that issue is the level of collaboration between the academic institution and industry, and that depends on a lot of factors that are difficult to account for, not the least of which is the relationship of the faculty to the local industry. If you have strong relationships, you're going to have a good ability to do co-ops, you're going to have the ability to facilitate exchange, and you're going to have graduates who are actually going to have the skill set needed for the sector. If you don't, it can be challenging.

On the other side, there can be institutions that see a trend, such as a lot of people being interested in making video games, and they basically start throwing in some courses that actually aren't equipping their students. One way to address that is to have some kind of consistent accreditation process.

In the games sector, we're still relatively new. We're still young, we're dynamic, and we're constantly changing. The games sector looks very different now from what it did even three years ago. It's difficult to keep up, and as a consequence, there's no kind of accreditation. There's no standard that people who are delivering video game programs or video game courses are actually applying. They're just coming up with whatever they can come up with and having someone come in to teach it. As a consequence, it means that there's no consistency. Developing some kind of consistent accreditation is one way to actually develop that consistency.

[Avvey Peters]

I would agree. The overarching piece that will help in this is a constant feedback loop between what's happening in our colleges and universities and what industry is looking for. Co-op programs, apprenticeship programs, and internships are one method by which you can build that feedback loop. Another is collaborative R and D between industry and academic institutions.

We tend to think of tech as a contact sport. It's not helpful to build a new company, to build a new product, completely in a vacuum. You end up with solid new products, new companies, and exciting new initiatives when you are bumping into what's happening on a local campus or in another company and are taking advantage of any opportunity you can to see what else is happening out there. Making sure that researchers and faculty members and students have one foot in industry and one foot in the academic world is a really helpful way to create that feedback loop.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you, Mr. Shory. Your time is about up, so we'll move to Mr. Cuzner.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Thank you very much, Chair, and thanks very much to our guests for being here today.

Just to allay the concerns of my Conservative friends across the way, my colleague and former roommate, Mark Eyking, used to think yellow post-it notes were high tech, so you guys are like Mark Zuckerberg compared to Mark.

This is some very good stuff here today. I agree that the practical experience and developing the portfolio is certainly significant. We've heard that in other areas, as well.

You've identified that Ontario does a pretty good job with the co-op placements. Are there other provinces doing that? Are some doing it fairly well and are others not?

[Avvey Peters]

I know that there are co-op programs across the country—

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Do they have a tax incentive?

[Avvey Peters]

I'm not aware of other similar tax incentives. I don't know if my colleagues may have more information on that.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

You're not sure.

[Avvey Peters]

I'm not sure.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

I like your suggestion that the federal government probably could play a role in that as well. We had the community colleges and Polytechnics Canada in the other day, and they said that only 10% of apprentices who enrol in trades ever end up completing the entire apprenticeship and moving on to journeyman. It was 7% to 10%, as a matter of fact. It's getting that opportunity.

With the co-op programs, is there a commitment to stay with that employer for a period of time, or is it just a placement, and then you just move on?

[Avvey Peters]

It's a placement, but if a company manages to attract a student as a co-op employee, in our experience it becomes a “try before you buy” scenario for both the student and the company. The company has the ability to see that student in action and assess whether or not he or she will make a suitable full-time employee; the student has the opportunity to see what a career in that particular company would be like.

We see a stickiness factor emerge. A student who has had good co-op experiences in Ontario is far more likely to take a full-time job in Ontario, rather than sail off to Silicon Valley, Boston, or some other technology cluster.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Successful businesses usually come from a cluster. There's a natural affinity. There's a synergy that comes with groups working together. You identified Vancouver as being hot right now. Montreal is hot right now. Obviously there has to be a good working relationship in both of these communities, integrated with post-secondary education, community colleges, and what have you.

Who is doing it really well? Where are they getting it done really well in the country?

[Avvey Peters]

From our perspective there are a number of really strong tech clusters across the country. They're right across the board—Vancouver certainly, Calgary, and Montreal. There's a cluster emerging in Moncton. It depends on the kinds of industries there, the really important relationship between industry and the post-secondary environment, and the regional strength. It's a matter of building those collaborative relationships as a means of attracting key talent.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Are there places in Canada that have been more successful in turning out the intermediate- and senior-level employees, as opposed to entry-level and junior-level employees? Are you seeing more entry-level and junior-level employees coming out of the tech schools, and senior-level employees coming out of universities?