Human Resources committee  Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and honourable members. I'm very pleased to be here. Thank you for inviting ITAC to this forum. It's a very important discussion that we're having regarding skills and talent. As you know, ITAC represents the Canadian technology and ICT industry. Our me

Human Resources committee  Maybe I'll start with the first question you asked, and it's an important one: why is there so much unemployment out there? We're saying there's a skills shortage. In the ICT sector the jobs tend to go where the skills are. If the available skill pull is not what you need, your j

Human Resources committee  The only comment I would make is that the skill set need is very fluid. I think that's the biggest thing you need to come to grips with as you start looking at some sort of recommendation. The technology need is evolving very rapidly. If you're looking backwards in terms of what

Human Resources committee  We would actually welcome providing that kind of input to the government on how this should be done. When we talk to our members, this is one issue that comes up constantly. The other one that always comes up is that we always tend to manage by exception. There are some compani

Human Resources committee  Let me give a response to that one, then I'll ask Morgan and David to comment on it. I think, from an information gathering point of view, the sectoral studies were good. They were timely, and they addressed certain issues. As we look forward, whether these sectoral groups are t

Human Resources committee  I think there is a clear funding issue in starting these kinds of studies. There are several groups. One of them, David Ticoll, is here. There are some other groups out there. ICTC is also looking at some of these studies. All of these groups do meaningful work in terms of either

Human Resources committee  In terms of outsourcing, most of the jobs that you're talking about are what we call "code cutters"—very low-level jobs that, purely on an economic basis, will go where the economies are better. In terms of the talent jobs you're talking about, we need to start looking at talent

Human Resources committee  On the educational side, the expansion of co-op programs or similar programs is important. A big part is that the student needs to go to university, then go to work, and then come back. Often what happens is that a big part of our cohorts who are not in co-op programs go through

Human Resources committee  I'll answer the first part of the question in terms of where the shortages are. The major one we hear, when I poll several of our members, is in the area of business analysts with a technical skill. So we have raw technical skills with no business analytics attached to them as to

Human Resources committee  I will make a comment on where technology's going in terms of what we hear, so that you have the same sense of what we're hearing from our members. There are three things that come to the table all the time when we talk technology now. One is that everything is mobile, includin

Human Resources committee  I have the same comment. When I speak to the industry, to RIM and others, the input is that they all would like to see some sort of a program delivered whereby they can go out, get students in, and get some credit for bringing them in, either for the summer term or for two terms,

Human Resources committee  As well, 40% of our graduating class is not indigenous to Canada. They're foreign students. Current policy has seen a lot of them in fact go back after. The issue is how to create a model where a lot of them will stay here for four or five years, work, and contribute towards the

Human Resources committee  It is extremely critical that we pay attention to what I would label as top talent. The technology workforce is highly mobile and the separation of economics between a developing country and a developed country is slowly disappearing for that class of people. They can migrate jus

Human Resources committee  Maybe I'll answer the question on a slightly different slant. I know about the program you're talking about in CEGEP on Bombardier. It is important to have those things largely because the technology sector tends to grow by clusters. There's no such thing as a national cluster.

Industry committee  Good morning, Mr. Chair, honourable members. My name is Karna Gupta. I'm the president and CEO of ITAC, and I'm very pleased to be here on this intellectual property regime discussion. I have a personal interest because in a prior life I led Certicom, as their CEO, a small publi