Industry Committee on Feb. 24th, 2014

[Khaled Shariff]

Sure, yes.

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

It's a great one. He learned all about physics and math. I would like you to take a little bit of time to educate us on how you could target the education market, if you like, successfully, with a view to achieving positive results in math and science for our youth.

[Khaled Shariff]

It's estimated there is approximately $3,000 spent per student in North America on software. That's a huge figure. It's not always apparent how the digital technology appears in the classroom, but it does, whether through smart boards or through other softwares that are bought. Of course, it's nothing new—let's use the technology in the classroom—but what is new is the capability of that technology to actually increase competency in common core standards, if you will. Common core standards were developed over the last two years to try to give people a sort of watermark for how you could establish what you are trying to do. For example—

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Could you clarify who established those common core standards?

[Khaled Shariff]

Common core standards were established by working committees in the United States and Canada. Surprisingly, all 10 provinces are represented in the National Science Teachers Association. They have monthly meetings in which I have participated. They established certain common core competencies in science to try to give people across the board and across North America an idea of how you can harmonize and bring people up to speed.

Canada has less of a problem than the United States does, which constantly scores 28 and 31, but Canada is slipping as well. The idea is that of 40 hours in front of the screen, about 15 to 17 hours per week are spent playing just video games. You can reference my TEDx talk on that if you google my name.

The science shows that if you take some of that time away, you're actually able to increase base level scores. The goal is that if you can get the failing bottom 20% of grade 9 students to a passing rate, it will raise the GDP of a country by approximately 2.5% to 3% over every five years. This has been shown in the UNESCO study I showed you. This is huge and a very practical reason to do it.

We also don't want people falling behind generally, so we have an initiative with the MacArthur and the Mozilla foundations to recognize common core standard achievement in the games that we develop. We developed what's called the digital badging system with Mozilla, the Firefox people, and the MacArthur and the Bill and Melinda Gates foundations, that will recognize achievement in video games with common core standards. We are bringing that with NASA and our other partners into the Starlite project that we are working on now.

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Do you see an opportunity to use that badging system to enable students to achieve the common core competencies required in their academic programs, whether it's in grade 1, 9, or 12?

[Khaled Shariff]

Yes, I think the educational model as a whole is undergoing a radical shift. If you want to see some of the cutting-edge work that's being done, the Khan Academy has created a system, whereby through 4,000 to 5,000 different videos and exercises done online at a student's own pace, while supervised by a teacher....

I'll give you an example. Suppose all of you were students and you're not doing well and I can see that you're not doing well. I as the teacher can spend time with you and you're badged for all of your progress in those classrooms. That's a complete revolution for how a classroom works.

Classrooms essentially haven't changed in over a hundred years. We all sit and look at a screen now, but essentially it's the same thing. But there is a revolution. To harness that use of technology requires a hierarchical system that allows teachers to maximize their time. That, of course, can be done through the technology. If you can see which students are immediately having issues, you can go and help them. Surprisingly, they showed that students who would have had issues in the classrooms early on, when allowed to work at their own pace did not fall behind, that quite often those students later excelled. You can also look at Salman Khan's video on TED. That those students could often excel in an environment like that is like finding diamonds.

We all live in a technical environment. Why should it be any different for schools?

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Yes. That's incredible and it actually enables the teacher not to have to speak to the lowest common denominator, but to help whoever needs it.

[Khaled Shariff]

That's exactly it.

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

That's amazing. You're truly revolutionizing.

Are you dealing with educators? My background is as a school trustee before I became a member of Parliament. Have you reached out to schools?

[Khaled Shariff]

I participated in the MacArthur Foundation initiative with approximately 40 other schools from around North America, including some in Quebec. Yes, we have reached out and are very much having a dialogue with them. We are working with NASA as one of our clients. They have an interest, as does the Canadian Space Agency, in seeing that students continue to learn.

I will say this, though. It is hard for teachers to get over the initial hump of what the technology is about. There's a learning divide. I have a one and a half year old and he can pick up my iPad and start using it. I mean, what is that about?

They say that the exact statistic is it has shrunk to about eight years' difference, double the amount of knowledge. Some of us are going to be left behind in the revolution, but the idea is to create all those opportunities for the kids.

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Taking your colleague Mr. Moisan's example—

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

That's all the time we have. Sorry about that, Ms. Bateman.

Now on to Madam Sgro, for eight minutes.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Yes, it is quite fascinating, especially for some of us who are not into video games and all of that. We certainly see our kids into it all the time. There's a concern about addiction, too, because in Dungeons and Dragons, you name it, it's all there, and our kids are playing it at a younger and younger age.

On the benefit to Canada, what more can Canada do to make sure we stay competitive or get the competitive edge on this? We certainly have very smart people who are into this, who are developing the software and so on. What can we do to ensure that the net benefit would be to all of you, that we get the edge?

[Khaled Shariff]

I thought this was the most important question. I looked at this in terms of venture capital and IT technology, considering Palo Alto and Silicon Valley, where you hatch a billion-dollar company. The question is how Canada can deal with this.

I think the model is that you centralize highly educated pockets of academic professionals with venture capitalist accelerator programs, and of course, the start-up companies, and you create more opportunities for people to start small businesses in that environment.

The one thing in common I saw in jumping around the United States is that this is their model, if you look at VMASC with Old Dominion University and Lockheed Martin in Virginia, or you look at Palo Alto, which just happens to be next to Stanford University and everything else. We can do that too. Certainly, it's where BlackBerry was born, in a community like that. That is what you do. The way to make money, if you will, to be very frank about it, is to repeat models that work. You repeat what worked with BlackBerry. You have to have the intelligence, the access to capital funds, and an environment that allows start-ups to thrive.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Are there comments from any of the others?

[Jonathan Lutz]

I agree with everything that was just said.

The one piece I would add is we need to make it seamless and easy to access senior foreign talent and bring it into the country to help us seed innovation, help us educate, and help us develop the best-of-breed products.

We don't have all of the senior leadership that we need here right now. While in time we might find more of that from within, there's an immediate need to make sure our accelerated LMO process stays in place, that the ICT process stays in place, that we have a streamlined way of getting that talent into Canada, and that the temporary foreign worker program stays in place as well. When we bring these people in, they're not taking Canadian jobs; in fact, they're doing exactly the opposite. They're creating more Canadian jobs and helping educate Canadians into being the next batch of leaders to the future.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

You indicated earlier, Mr. Lutz, that you had a significant problem trying to find that talent here in Canada. How do you go about looking for that talent here in Canada? Where do you look?

[Jonathan Lutz]

When it comes to the most senior leaders, most of them are actually brought up with years and years of experience in the industry. It's very hard to train someone from a different industry to come into the video game industry as a senior executive, because it is such a specialist field. It's a unique blend of artists, engineers, animators. Our media form is kind of the intersection of math, science, and art, if you like.

These people are highly specialized, and these senior people are few and far between around the world. Those best and brightest are the people we need here to help educate our workforce and train them, so that in turn, when they have 10 years' experience under their belt, they're ready to be that next executive producer on a half-billion dollar franchise, for example.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

I certainly would hope to see that we have as many as possible right here as well.

What about the universities? There must be an awful lot of interest, not necessarily at the senior level, but certainly from many of our young people who are extensively into IT who would look for those opportunities to work on developing games and so on.

Mr. Moisan.

[Pierre Moisan]

We're increasingly competing, strangely, with database companies, major consultants like CGI, or firms like that. They're after increasingly the same data managers as we are. These people are becoming increasingly rare. It's important to promote those jobs because there's actual growth in our industry. To make it grow, manpower training is so important.

Also, I want to add a point on immigration. We have a company that we acquired called Volta. They're one of the leaders in the world for concept art, which means creating the characters, the environments, and all that. Out of 25 employees, 15 different languages are spoken. There are people from the Philippines, from Indonesia, from all over the world. These people are the best talents in the world and now they're in Quebec City. Increasingly they create jobs, and they can train other Canadians into that. We have la crème de la crème and this makes Canada a leader. Immigration flexibility is a key element also.

We want to train people. The thing is senior people are super rare, and the way to hire them is increasingly to steal them from competitors. In Montreal there is that problem, and because of that, salaries are getting higher and higher. The benefits that we have from the tax credits will be lost if the salary raises are too rapid. It's kind of like a dog running after its tail. That part is dangerous.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

How big an industry is it in Canada? It's certainly an industry that's growing rapidly. I'd be interested to know just an estimate of what they think is the actual value of the entertainment software industry in Canada.

[Pierre Moisan]

In Quebec City it's about 1,500, and Montreal is about 10,000 and something. Montreal is the biggest one. There may be 15,000 in Montreal. If you count interactive things, not just games but websites and everything, it's much bigger than that. Sometimes we hire the same people, too. It's tens of thousands, but I wouldn't say the exact number.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Jobs.

[Pierre Moisan]

Jobs, yes.