And beyond?
Evidence of meeting #12 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was games.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #12 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was games.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:55 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Executions Labs
No. We can only take folks who are legally allowed to be paid in Canada. We have immigration issues that are completely separate and that I don't think are solvable, but that's a whole other discussion.
But no, it's primarily Canadians or—
4:55 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Executions Labs
No.
It's primarily Canadians or people who have residency status, etc., from all across Canada. They're experienced developers with generally five to ten years of experience. We are not taking students.
4:55 p.m.
Conservative
Ed Holder Conservative London West, ON
But they come to you because...just fill that line. Give me a thirty-second elevator—
4:55 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Executions Labs
It's because they have a vision of a game they want to create and they want to do it on their own. So we provide the seed funding as well as the mentorship and guidance and development resources to enable a team of four or five experienced developers to start something new.
5 p.m.
Conservative
Ed Holder Conservative London West, ON
So how big is your organization to do all those interesting things?
5 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Executions Labs
We've only been around for one year and we've touched eight different teams.
5 p.m.
Conservative
5 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Executions Labs
We're the only ones doing it in the world. No one else is doing what we do anywhere in the world.
5 p.m.
Conservative
Ed Holder Conservative London West, ON
Is that because you're the smartest guy doing these things? Why is that?
5 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Executions Labs
I'm not sure how I should respond to that.
5 p.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
5 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Executions Labs
We were inspired by other incubators and accelerator programs from around the world, for example, Y Combinator's a very popular accelerator in Silicon Valley, Communitech here in Waterloo. Those incubators are generally all encompassing, meaning it's technology—
5 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Executions Labs
We saw a gap to do that kind of role specifically and only for the game industry.
5 p.m.
Conservative
Ed Holder Conservative London West, ON
Okay. I'm going to stop you there for a second. That's a good start.
Madame Poulin and Madame Verge, thank you as well.
It's interesting, I had a company come to my city of London, Ontario. We're the 10th largest city in Canada and we're very proud of our university—we talked about universities before—and our digital gaming centre of excellence in London, Ontario. I had a representative from Lockheed Martin come to my city who said he was really interested in London because of its strategic position as a centre of excellence in digital gaming, and because they like to hire those people.
Ladies, does that happen a lot? You get some pretty bright kids—you're all kids to me, at my age—and then they get hired away by industry? Do you find that a big risk?
5 p.m.
Senior Advisor, Corporate Affairs, Ubisoft Entertainment Inc.
Yes, as I said before—
As I was saying earlier....
Sorry about the French and English.
5 p.m.
Senior Advisor, Corporate Affairs, Ubisoft Entertainment Inc.
Our industry is competitive. Our market encompasses anything to do with high tech development, such as simulations at Lockheed Martin and CAE. So our industry also has resources from the engineering and innovation sectors. People working in the video game sector have a very high income, but so do those working in other industries.
5 p.m.
Conservative
Ed Holder Conservative London West, ON
With private industry as well....
We've all seen the movies about Apple and all these groups, and I imagine all your staff are under 23 with blue jeans and nerdy glasses—that may not be fair—and exceptionally bright people. Maybe that's the only part I got right, they're probably very bright people.
But I understand that in Quebec and Montreal you have very high employment, but your company is from France. Why Canada? Are we just going to close down France and move everything here, which would be okay?
5 p.m.
Senior Advisor, Corporate Affairs, Ubisoft Entertainment Inc.
I don't think that the French would agree with you. At first, the French industry had access to a very talented workforce and had a solid pool of businesses. Over the past few years, the industry has been split into two sectors. Why did we choose to set up in Canada? Because Canada, especially Montreal, has a good pool of artistic talent. As Jason was saying, not only programming and technology go into the making of video games. Artistic work is also involved. The artistic component is very important. In North America, we found a good pool of artists in Montreal, along with a vibrant cultural scene, five universities in the same city, and a French-speaking workforce that is also bilingual. So Montreal was our first choice. Moreover, thanks to tax credits, operational costs seemed very competitive to us.
5 p.m.
Conservative
February 26th, 2014 / 5 p.m.
Senior Advisor, Corporate Affairs, Ubisoft Entertainment Inc.
The provincial.
5 p.m.
Conservative
Ed Holder Conservative London West, ON
The provincial.... Does the federal tax system help you at all?