Industry Committee on March 24th, 2014

[Dr. Richard Smith]

Well, because it's a one-year program plus an internship, it's effectively both. It's a year, and other than their internship student fees that are about $600, it's for the entire program.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Okay. I thought there was a master's as well as a graduate program offered.

[Dr. Richard Smith]

Yes, that is a master's degree. But it's a one-year master's degree.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Once someone graduates from your program, what kind of income can they be expected to earn?

[Dr. Richard Smith]

They tend to move into positions in about the $50,000-to-$60,000 range, mid-entry level positions, and then move up fairly quickly. Our students are typically earning about $80,000 to $90,000 within two years.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

I know that you said Canadians are only paying $30,000, but $30,000 after having been in school for a number of years is a lot to gather together for tuition. But what you're saying is that they're making fairly good money afterwards.

[Dr. Richard Smith]

We have a scholarship program.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Okay.

With respect to the types of projects and education that they receive, would there be an inclination or any road forward into cyber-security jobs? Would that be an element?

[Dr. Richard Smith]

Yes, I had one student work for CSEC after graduation. It isn't a major focus of ours. We tend to focus on the part of digital media that's fun and entertaining. But, on the other hand, a key component of what we do is getting diverse groups of people to work effectively together.

Digital media is globally a very competitive industry, as my fellow witnesses will attest to. You have to compete on a global stage. The efficiency that is demanded is extreme, and a great part of that efficiency, because the resource here is the highly qualified people, is getting those people to work together effectively. It's the secret sauce that we're trying to deliver. In that sense, I think our graduates would be effective whether in games, whether it's medical games, whether it's educational, or even in security. Because those kinds of things are all delivered by digital technology people in teams.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Okay.

Mr. Schmalz, in what ways can the government promote the video game industry in Canada besides tax incentives? Are there any barriers to your new developments that we can overcome?

[Michael Schmalz]

I would say that, in general, the tax incentives that we've seen in Ontario, especially over the past 10 years—and we've been in a dialogue with the Ontario government during that time—have basically brought the Ontario video game industry from when it was very small about 10 years ago to being quite sizable now, in comparison with the other video game centres in Canada.

I would say that where subsidies are given, especially in Canada, they do offer the support that video game makers need to make those initial mistakes and still be able to continue and work forward and not lose their businesses right off the start.

The way that the video game industry—

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Thank you very much, Mr. Schmalz. I'm sorry that I have to interrupt you again. I apologize, but time is always our enemy here, and I did allow some time to go over.

Mr. Côté, you have the floor. You have seven minutes.

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I thank the witnesses for being here with us today.

Where to start? I have a lot of questions. I have found this study very entertaining. I also learned a lot, but most of all, I hope to be able to help the sector develop.

I use my iPad for work but I am also a faithful Clash of Clans player, a Supercell game. I realized that some of our witnesses were probably among my gaming partners or opponents.

I will begin with you, Mr. Smith. I know that you are a researcher and that you have worked in various sectors. You are interested, among other things, by the social impact of new technologies. Do you conduct any research in your program and the school that you direct?

[Dr. Richard Smith]

Personally, I've had to limit my research because of the administrative load of running the program, but we do maintain some limited research by virtue of our connections to our four partners. We are the national headquarters for something called GRAND, which is a federally funded centre of excellence in animation and graphics. We also have visiting researchers from UBC, a group called Mitacs, which is basically an interaction design group from Computer Science at UBC. We also have some cognitive science people from SFU and UBC working on our campus. Our campus will also be the home to Emily Carr University in two and a half years so we'll have that benefit as well. So we do bring research in, and of course we have visiting researchers. We run programs for visiting professors. We had professors from Poland, France, and the United States in the last couple of years.

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

That is interesting.

Aside from cuts to research and development, there is also talk of reorienting programs to allocate most efforts and means to applied research, thus neglecting basic research, and research in the humanities in particular.

Moreover, you referred to the sectors you work in, in the context of your program. Let us just take augmented reality as an example. There could be surprising applications we do not even suspect yet.

In the course of our committee's work we became aware of the support we could give to scientists to further research on cancer or viruses. In the magazine Nature Structural & Molecular Biology they discussed supporting scientists by involving gamers in dismantling the proteins in a virus.

Do you have anything to do with things like that? Are you worried by the fact that basic research and humanities research, which aim to understand the phenomenon of new technologies in our society, may be threatened?

[Dr. Richard Smith]

Yes. I called our projects industry projects, but in fact about a quarter of those industry projects are sponsored by research scientists, who use their research dollars to get our students to build things either at the front end of research—so tools, as you say, to unfold proteins, or whatever, using digital media tools at that level—or importantly, to communicate the results of science.

Nowadays science funding generally requires what they call knowledge translation. Our students are extremely good at telling the story of the science and the science work that we've done. We've done work with arthritis researchers, with such things in health as mobility, walking, and gait recognition, with forestry, and with fisheries. We're involved in the process of science. We regard that as a big part of our program and the breadth of our students' opportunities.

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you very much.

I will now address my comments to Mr. Carrier.

When we heard the Ubisoft representatives, Ms. Poulin talked to us about a particular problem concerning workers located outside of the country. In light of your extensive hiring experience, I would like to know if you have also observed that this was becoming a growing concern.

Since Canada is a locus of development and expertise, we have exported a great deal of young talent. I am talking here especially about young single people who left to go and work and build a life elsewhere in the world. However when we offer those people the possibility of reintegrating the same company or joining a Canadian company that wants to repatriate this precious expertise, which may be unique in the country, these young Canadians do not want to come back because they can't bring their spouse or families with them.

Have you observed this phenomenon? If so, is it getting worse? And does this represent a real problem for the industry's development?

[Martin Carrier]

On that I must say that Ubisoft operates at another level than we do. It employs between 3,000 and 3,500 people located in Toronto, Montreal and Quebec.

For our part, we have not encountered that particular problem. Thanks to their spouse's work permit, wives—since we are generally talking about women—have been able to come with their husbands. Fortunately, I have not had to face this type of problem up till now and I hope that this will continue to be the case in the future.

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Fine.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Mr. Côté, you have 30 seconds left.

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

I am going to sacrifice those 30 seconds, Mr. Chair. Thank you.

I also want to thank the witnesses.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Thank you, Mr. Côté.

Now we'll go to Mr. Van Kesteren and given him the opportunity to clear up whether he was actually playing that Lego game on his iPad when Mr. Carrier mentioned it.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

I'm not to be caught with my fingers in the cookie jar.

Mr. Chair, it's good to be back on the industry, science and technology committee. As a matter of fact, I was doing a presentation just this past week. They presented my bio and said that I was a member of this committee. I called my staff and told them they needed to change that, but about an hour later the whip's office called and informed me that I would be serving on this committee as well, so I guess that change doesn't need to be made.

Mr. Carrier, I have to tell you that the last time I played a game, I think it was Pac-Man. I'm really not one of those who have fallen into the lure of video games, but I know it's quite a trend.

It was mentioned in a number of questions and comments that a lot of bright minds are getting into this industry. I think back, and if we were to tag the 20th century, it was a century of innovation and growth. Incredible monuments to humanity were built. I think of the automobile industry, engineering, the Hoover Dam, science, space travel, and medicine.

Great minds gravitated to these things. As a result, we have some wonderful aspects that we all enjoy and we all have profited from, for instance, space travel. One of the things we always remember is when Texas Instruments came out. Had it not been for that mission to the moon, they never would have created that. Is there spinoff in your industry?

I'm going to ask all of our participants if they could answer this question. Are there spinoffs to other sectors of society? Perhaps you could elaborate and tell us about those. Remember, they're all going to answer this question, so perhaps you could zero in on one or two.

[Martin Carrier]

All right.

Well, I'll start off by saying I think I got a high score notification from the office on your gaming, but....

[Voices]

Oh, oh!