Industry committee  Yes, this industry grew globally long before that. However it's not the issue of surviving. It's the question of growth and competitiveness on a global basis. There is no question these tax credits are vital to the continued growth and success of this industry in Canada. You onl

Industry committee  No.

Industry committee  We have close to 20 members.

Industry committee  Yes. We represent a lot of the major companies, but we also represent a number of some of the smaller companies as well, and we're constantly diversifying our membership.

Industry committee  I don't know if I'd use that term, but our goal is obviously to be the credible representative—

Industry committee  Yes. I think our goal is to be the best credible representative of the industry that we can be.

Industry committee  I don't look at it as competition. Electronic Arts, for example, is our member, so we represent them in Canada in government affairs issues like this. Execution Labs is an accelerator incubator program for start-up companies.

Industry committee  As you mentioned the closest thing would be your guest on Monday, the Canadian Interactive Alliance that represents interactive digital media, which is a broad overview of a number of different subsectors. Video games would be one of them.

Industry committee  That's a good question. We do have some statistics on the processing times for work permits and LMO applications in a white paper we recently did with ITAC. For an LMO application—not a work permit but a labour market opinion—the current processing time could be up to four month

Industry committee  Under the previous IT workers program that existed up until three years ago, those employees who fell under the IT workers program were actually exempt from LMOs, so there was no wait. Since that program was cancelled and in light of the recent problems with the temporary foreign

Industry committee  Do you mean in our industry?

Industry committee  I would say it is probably close to 5% of the total workforce. We did have statistics in our study about the number of open jobs. I think it was something like 1,200 open positions in the next 24 months.

Industry committee  It is a small number. It is not a large number. Most of the employees we hire in our industry do come from Canada. It's in our best interests to do that.

Industry committee  It could be more than that across the country. Like I say, 5% seems to be a number that's being kicked around. Again, to go back to your example of the kids graduating from college, they aren't the problem. Graduating students from university is great, but without the senior peo

Industry committee  That's right.