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.
Liberal
Judy Sgro Liberal York West, ON
The issue of internships is another opportunity. If you're having a meeting with universities, would there not be an opportunity to start talking about internships? It sounds like an industry that a lot of people would be interested in getting involved in, and internships provide that opportunity.
Do you provide internships currently?
Advisor, Corporate Affairs, Ubisoft Entertainment Inc.
Yes, Ubisoft has an excellent internship program. We host over 200 young interns every year, and many of them are hired by our company later on.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Sweet
Thank you very much, Madam Sgro.
Now on to Ms. Bateman, for eight minutes.
Conservative
Joyce Bateman Conservative Winnipeg South Centre, MB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank all the witnesses. This is an incredible and very interesting industry. If I have understood correctly, it contributes $3.2 billion to our economy. That's amazing!
I have a few questions for you mainly about growth factors.
Conservative
Joyce Bateman Conservative Winnipeg South Centre, MB
Ms. Verge, you mentioned a few growth factors. I am very interested in that. We on this side of the table are part of the Conservative government that is targeting economic growth, job creation and long-term prosperity. So I am very interested in your growth criteria. Can you please tell us again what those factors are?
Senior Advisor, Corporate Affairs, Ubisoft Entertainment Inc.
Workforce availability and skills, as well as tax incentives, are factors we consider.
Senior Advisor, Corporate Affairs, Ubisoft Entertainment Inc.
One example, of course, is the provincial payroll tax credit.
Senior Advisor, Corporate Affairs, Ubisoft Entertainment Inc.
That's essential. Another consideration is tax credit for research and development and anything related to project support in terms of modernization, such as in the manufacturing sector. We have the same types of projects. We have to modernize our technologies and offices. We have to expand them, and increase the electrical and Internet capacities, or set up server farms. We have to keep step with industry developments by lending money to companies or buying shares.
The business environment is the third criterion. Financial institutions must be business partners that understand our industry, and understand that a project may take four years to complete. They should also understand that failures are possible, that all this is normal and that confidence must be maintained. This is not an industry....
Conservative
Senior Advisor, Corporate Affairs, Ubisoft Entertainment Inc.
Exactly. That's available for big companies. I think that, for smaller companies, acquiring funding for start-up activities and prototypes, and securing patient capital is essential.
The last factor is the industry ecosystem. That's sort of what we were talking about. This encompasses universities, research centres, smaller studios and companies that produce technological tools that can help us—audio tools for our games.
Conservative
Joyce Bateman Conservative Winnipeg South Centre, MB
That's part of my second question.
Your colleague, Mr. Della Rocca, talked about the collaboration between all levels of government and the university world. Of course, that's a challenge. What do you think would be the ideal environment for creating another Standford University around your industry? What are the key ingredients? You can talk about this for as long as you want.
Chief Executive Officer, Executions Labs
That's a great question. How do you create a Stanford or a MIT Media Lab type of environment?
We have some of that to a certain extent already in Canada. Obviously, there's a lot of activity in Waterloo, in Communitech, and the University of Waterloo is very popular. In B.C. there's UBC and Simon Fraser, etc. In Montreal you have some of the universities there; Concordia in particular has a Technoculture, Art and Games centre that does research around games.
I hinted just before about a research consortium that exists in Canada, called Grand, G-R-A-N-D, like grand, which stands for Graphics, Animation and New Media. It is federally funded through the NCE, the Network of Centres of Excellence. It's a consortium of 25 universities across Canada. I happen to be on the board and for the next two days I'll be in Toronto for a research management committee, where we decide which researchers and universities get more or less funding.
Conservative
Chief Executive Officer, Executions Labs
I don't know which arm the NCE, Networks of Centres of Excellence, comes under. I'm not a federal.... So the degree to which the researchers collaborate with industry—in fact Ubisoft is listed in some of those research projects as collaborators and industry partners—has a direct impact on who we fund more or less, because we want to make sure that researchers aren't up in the ivory towers just pontificating but are doing stuff that's relevant to industry.
That I think is quite unique to Canada. I don't see in my worldly travels many consortiums of that degree. They're funded $25 million for five-year chunks and are actually doing their renewal right this summer so hopefully we'll get another $25 million to keep going.
This linkage between industry and academia is critical. I think to also touch on the—
Conservative
Joyce Bateman Conservative Winnipeg South Centre, MB
How do you facilitate that? Through your group, you're funded through this grant, the NCE, which will....
Mr. Chair, if we could do more research on that at some point and get more information on those two programs for the committee that would be wonderful.
What's the magic? What creates this—
Chief Executive Officer, Executions Labs
The magic is games, as cheesy as that sounds, because games are this wonderfully interdisciplinary artifact. You have people from the business school, you have architects, people from the arts school, and the engineering department who are passionate about working and studying and understanding games, and research on games. They go out into the real world and knock on the door of Ubisoft and try to work together.
Conservative
Joyce Bateman Conservative Winnipeg South Centre, MB
I've graduated from a business school. I'm a chartered accountant, and the interesting thing is that we always used to say, if you want to kill entrepreneurial spirit go to business school. I know that doesn't happen in every case, but you can point to a lot of entrepreneurs who don't go to business school. So where is the synergy that makes it—
Chief Executive Officer, Executions Labs
Yes, in many ways we consider our incubation program as the new MBA, but that's a whole other discussion.
I think it just provides a rich opportunity for people to break through the normal academic silos and reach across all the other departments, because inherently they're just people who are passionate about this art form, and they go seek it out. You would be surprised. You talk to any academic and they will tell you the war stories about fighting with the deans and the chairmen about crossing boundaries, but they did it anyway because they loved it. Then when they go and they talk to a Ubisoft or us and they're so excited. Then money starts entering the academic sphere and it's, oh, oh, wait a second, there's opportunity here for industry collaboration, and like magic it just happens, because games are, again, this wonderful interdisciplinary artifact that people are just passionate about.
February 26th, 2014 / 4:30 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Sweet
Thank you, Madam Bateman.
I now yield the floor to Mr. Côté for eight minutes.
NDP
Raymond Côté NDP Beauport—Limoilou, QC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I will first turn to Mr. Della Rocca.
You really focused on small companies and start-ups. As you said, the overall fiscal framework is not necessarily adapted to their reality.
I would like to talk about patient venture capital. In Quebec, we do have a very special experience with labour-sponsored funds. Monday, we actually talked about that with Mr. Moisan, of Frima Studio. He was very clear. He thought that the abolition of the tax credit for labour-sponsored funds—such as CSN's Fondaction and the Fonds de solidarité FTQ—could hurt companies in this sector.
Do you think that applies to small companies and start-ups? We know that the labour-sponsored funds developed an expertise on companies located outside the major centres, as well as on small companies that were not able, despite their best efforts, to partner with someone who would be prepared to take on the risk and invest.
Chief Executive Officer, Executions Labs
We've had some discussions with Fondaction and FTQ just as two examples of fonds de travailleurs. They play an important role in the Quebec economy, but they are not very active at the start-up stage.
There are different stages where you have investments. At the very earliest stage it's what you would often call “love money” because someone has to love you to be crazy enough to give you money. So it's angels and it's rich uncles and that kind of stuff.
Then you have seed stage, or early-stage investment. In Montreal an example there would be Real Ventures, which was quite active in developing the start-up ecosystem. It's not until you are sort of profitable and you're generating revenue and now you need growth capital, that's where you see Fondaction and FTQ coming in at that stage.
It's far too risky for them to be playing in the love money and early stage because the level of failures is quite high and the bets are much smaller. So generally they're doing bigger checks at a later stage.
So they're an important part of the economy. Not that I'm super familiar with all their statistics and I think they contribute to a great degree, but it's not really relevant at the early-stage start-up level.