Canadian Heritage committee  I think that comes down to what we were talking about on training and education. We have the talent in Canada. The ACTRA community has 22,000 members throughout Canada, so we have the numbers. The problem is that most of them haven't had any experience working in games, so it's s

Canadian Heritage committee  For me, it's largely what's been said. Canada was lucky it got a headstart on the industry in many ways and has established itself as a leader already, which acts as a magnet for talent from overseas and also from within Canada. Because we have such a great reputation, most kids

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, I do.

Canadian Heritage committee  Almost 300 from November of last year to November of this year.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, they will. It depends on the projects.

Canadian Heritage committee  No, we aren't affected by sales.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, enormously. When I first started working in the industry 15 years ago, when Montreal's Ubisoft first opened up, actors probably had an income of around $2,000 or $3,000 for all of them. In the calendar year we were just talking about, it's just over a million dollars that ha

Canadian Heritage committee  At the moment in Montreal we are trying to partner directly with the industry. We are looking at partnering with Ubisoft and a company called Game On Audio. They both have their own motion-capture studios. We hope we can partner with them so that actors can get experience for the

Canadian Heritage committee  It's pretty much all actors at this stage. Synthetic voices play a role during the early development of some games. Some companies will use them as “place holders” while they're doing the programming so they can see how things work together without the expense of bringing in the

Canadian Heritage committee  It is very seldom that you will come in and only do one role. Usually, you will do two or three. They will separate them throughout the game. With a game like Assassin's Creed, you have 40 or 50 hours of playing, so if they space the characters out properly and there's 10 hours i

Canadian Heritage committee  There's a buy-out period, but at the moment it is somewhat of a moot point with video games because they have such a short shelf life. Usually after six months or so, if you find them anywhere, they're in the bargain bin, and a year later they are consigned to memory.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thanks, Stephen. Thank you all for having me here today for this opportunity to talk to you. Over the past few years, work opportunities for Canadian performers in video games have grown tremendously. As Steve mentioned, we've been lending our voices to video game characters ev