Human Resources committee  On the first question, my answer is, unhelpfully, going to be that it depends. It depends, actually, entirely on the individual program. What we find is that in industry, you have programs running out of Sheridan or U of Waterloo or the Great Northern Way Campus over in B.C., whi

Human Resources committee  Briefly, no, we have not, at least not in a cohesive way on a national basis. There have been a number of regional or more specific initiatives. Often we find a lot of this happens with individual companies that form individual relationships with their communities. They will actu

Human Resources committee  I don't have an overall sense. I hear more from the companies with respect to the challenges they have, rather than the overall numbers. The sense I also have is that it's not overwhelmingly large, because again it's for specific positions as they come up, and to meet specific ne

Human Resources committee  Sure, and I would essentially agree with that. As I indicated, what we have found is that hiring at the junior levels, because we are basically a team-based industry, is typically not as critical an issue, simply by virtue of the fact that we actually need the juniors. We need

Human Resources committee  Yes, absolutely. Actually, it's a great question, because particularly from a video game industry perspective, it's all of them. We have a critical issue. Only in 2012 has the North American industry classification system been updated to acknowledge the existence of video game

Human Resources committee  Absolutely. The cost of living in Canada is not the cheapest in the world, but it's among the best. We're certainly a lot cheaper than a lot of other destinations, particularly the U.S. and the U.K. When you think about Toronto's cost in comparison with, say, London or New York,

Human Resources committee  Absolutely.

Human Resources committee  That's Canada's.

Human Resources committee  That's exactly right.

Human Resources committee  That's a great question. I was focusing in my testimony on what we frankly regard as an urgent and critical issue, which is about filling the intermediate and senior jobs and the steps the government can take right now, but there also clearly needs to be a longer-term process—my

Human Resources committee  The specific size of the industry in Canada is about 16,000 direct employees.

Human Resources committee  In terms of dollars, we're about $1.7 billion, and it's in direct economic activity. That's in terms of the market, but also in terms of purchasing power and whatnot.

Human Resources committee  Globally it's about $60 billion right now.

Human Resources committee  It's extremely positive; Canada is third in the world in game production, and we're number one on a per capita basis. We know this. Many countries that I visit will complain very loudly about the fact that there is a reverse brain drain. We obviously have some significant challen

Human Resources committee  It's for a wide variety of reasons, and partly because we do produce very good talent. At the end of the day, talent is always going to be first and foremost to any company. This is certainly true in the game sector, and it's true of the broader ICT sector. That will always be th