Human Resources Committee on April 4th, 2012

[Jason Kee]

At least from the games perspective, that aspect doesn't matter very much. What distinguishes those at the junior level versus those at the intermediate and senior levels really comes down to experience. What matters in experience are the products you have worked on, your experience, and your portfolio. Having a solid skill set built through post-secondary education at either the college or university level is critically important when you're starting, but by the time you hit five years, your experience is far more important than the actual education you had. We find more experienced personnel coming out of the clusters because the clusters are producing more people. Proportionately, there are more people at the higher levels.

For the games sector, Montreal is among the top places. Montreal has a mature sector. It has been around since about the mid-1990s. It has a lot of large players, such as Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, Funcom, and a number of other sectors. It also has a very burgeoning small to medium-size enterprise industry and well-established relationships with the schools, such as the Université de Montréal and a number of the others. They're all producing the graduates who will then come up through the ranks.

For the others, it depends on the specifics. Vancouver, for the games industry, is changing a lot. It was a very mature cluster and focused on building console games; now that's shifting to building games for smart phones, which is a completely different skill set. They're changing in terms of the nature of the jobs they're offering.

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

We've just come through the budget process. I'm sure your organizations have had the opportunity to assess what's in it for them. Usually that's how people look at it.

Is it good or bad? Do you have any comments? Are there things that will help your industry in the budget? Your criticism is well founded and well taken. Would you care to comment?

[Avvey Peters]

From our perspective, the number one challenge for tech companies today is talent. Close behind that is access to capital. At a very high level, the measures we saw in the budget around additional risk capital being made available are a positive sign for our industry.

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

It's a positive thing.

[Avvey Peters]

Certainly. Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

We'll conclude with Mr. Daniel.

You have seven minutes. You don't need to necessarily use them up, but you're welcome to.

[Joe Daniel, Conservative, Don Valley East, ON]

All right. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Thank you, witnesses.

One of the questions I want to ask has to do with outsourcing. In almost all of the other high-tech industries that we have here in Canada, they're outsourcing both software development and hardware development to places like India, just as an example—to Bangalore, to Hyderabad, to Trivandrum, etc.

Is there any outsourcing going on, and if there isn't, why not? You have a great skill set that's available at a price that's way cheaper than in Canada to fill some of these gaps.

This question is open to all of you.

[Jason Kee]

Yes, there is outsourcing that's going on. In the video games sector it's a bit different from the other tech sectors, not the least of it being that at the end of the day we are creating a creative product that is built entirely around teams that work together, often in the same physical location. They don't have to; often you can be divided up in different locations. As a consequence, though, especially on the content side of the equation, it's difficult to outsource that. It's particularly difficult to outsource that to a cultural environment that's vastly different from your own cultural environment, where the cultural touchstones about making a game are not going to be the same.

The games produced by China and India, which incidentally have extremely strong game development communities themselves, are very different from a lot of the games we produce here. As a consequence, we tend not to outsource that much to them.

In terms of very run-of-the-mill grunt work, some of that will get outsourced if it's economical, but often we find that the calibre of the work being done locally is much higher. As well, there's the fact that, again, if they're working locally—in local teams in the same physical location—it facilitates communication in a way that you just don't have when you're working with someone on the other side of the world.

[Sandra Saric, Director, Talent Initiatives, Information and Communications Technology Council]

With respect to skills and labour shortages, these are the areas that are not being offshored, so when we look at that—as Mr. Kee mentioned, we're talking about the content side—we're also looking at security occupations, management occupations, and analysis, meaning a lot of the mid- to senior-level occupations. With intellectual property, the challenge is that you don't want to lose that intellectual property, so the areas where we're really seeing a shift in Canada are around those occupations. That's not to say that occupations for new graduate are not there, but those are really a lot of the areas of labour and skill shortages.

[Joe Daniel, Conservative, Don Valley East, ON]

Would you like to comment, Madam Peters? No?

All right, then, I'll switch subjects. Somebody mentioned that about 1,200 are coming out each year. How many of those are actually poached to other countries, such as the U.S.? How many of them actually stay in Canada?

[Namir Anani]

I'm sorry; I didn't hear the question.

[Joe Daniel, Conservative, Don Valley East, ON]

Of the graduates who come out each year, how many of them actually take up jobs here in Canada versus going to pick something up in the U.S. or Europe or somewhere else? Do you have any idea?

[Namir Anani]

I don't think we have anything specific on that.

[Sandra Saric]

It's a good question. We've just completed a study on the impact of immigration, not emigration, but we can definitely look into all the data and get our research analysts to look into it. It's very difficult, with respect to exit, to track individuals other than at border crossings.

[Jason Kee]

I don't have any concrete data. I know that in the games sector, because of the way we're regarded internationally, we are a destination for people to come to. People tend not to leave, as a consequence. We accept more people from other jurisdictions.

Four years ago, the U.K. in particular was number three and we were number four. Now we're number three and the U.K. is number six. The U.K. blames us. A lot of their developers have actually come here.

[Joe Daniel, Conservative, Don Valley East, ON]

Would you like to comment, Ms. Peters?

[Avvey Peters]

I can say anecdotally that we have a sense that our regional technology companies aren't capturing as many of our local grads as we would like. These are really talented people. They can work anywhere in the world. We do our best to try to build an affinity for them locally so that they stay, if not in Waterloo region, then at least in Ontario or Canada, but I don't have any hard numbers.

[Joe Daniel, Conservative, Don Valley East, ON]

Okay.

Given that the industry is so dynamic, with many changes in techniques, etc., in just a few years, what sort of things do you think you need to feed back from industry to the educational institutions in terms of changing the skills being taught so that you actually get what you need?

[Avvey Peters]

I would go back to the point that Jason made earlier, around the system in general, which is that the principles of speed and flexibility are really paramount. I know, having some spent time working at a university, that it's really difficult for an academic institution to overhaul a curriculum and change direction drastically, but I think those two principles are things that industry is really seeking and that we should be trying to build into our partnerships with academic players.

[Jason Kee]

I would agree entirely. In my own view and I think generally the industry's view, the most successful partnerships, the most successful programs, are ones that were built with input from industry and are ones that are also based largely on personal relationships in the community where you have that kind of flexibility built in.

Trying to do something from the top down is very tough, because the academic environment is such that it's extremely difficult to make quick changes, so building in that kind of approach from the outset is critical.

[Namir Anani]

I think this environment is changing at such a dramatic pace that whatever we know today is not whatever is coming out tomorrow. I keep saying that the iPad 1, which we think of as ancient technology, came out in March 2010, which is not that long ago.

The reality is there should be some better forecasting from the industry in terms of the job needs of tomorrow. When we talk about the job needs of tomorrow, we mean the predicted jobs—where things are going. There's a good indication of where that demand's going to happen, whether it's in the mobile arena, whether it's in the....There are some great indicators that are taking place at the moment that can give that projection.

You have to factor the lead-in time to build that through academia, so I think better forecasting, a better handle on that environment and on connecting with academia, is going to be important going forward.

[Joe Daniel, Conservative, Don Valley East, ON]

I have one other question, then.

Coming from an engineering background, I know that being a good engineer means you get promoted into management and you make a lousy manager. What is the industry doing to ensure that people in the supervisory roles are actually not just technically savvy, but also have some good management skills?

[Sandra Saric]

I can speak to some of the programs. I can actually speak to it in terms of one of our programs that we do for internationally educated professionals who are managers. One of our programs is called coaching to career. It's really focused on what you need to be looking at and doing if you are a manager, and then it matches you to a coach who's in the industry in that occupation. The hope is that the individual in that occupation also learns leadership through this. That's an example of one thing industry is doing.

I appreciate the comments, because it's definitely a challenge in our sector.

[Joe Daniel, Conservative, Don Valley East, ON]

Does anybody else want to comment?

[Jason Kee]

I would agree entirely that it is a bit of a challenge. I'm not speaking now of what the industry does, but my own philosophy when it comes to this aspect is that often it's a lot easier to train a business person about some of the details of the industry than it is to train a technical person or a creative person about the details of the business.

Often we find the technical guys remain technical guys; they may become technical directors and have a team under them, but they'll still be involved in that side, while we have producers and business and legal people handling the more business-oriented aspects of it, which is an arrangement that people tend to be more satisfied with.