B.C.`s digital media, visual effects industry could be hamstrung by changes
VANCOUVER - Vancouver has been busy promoting itself as a creative, digital hub. It`s part of a strategic effort to make the city a place where young, smart people want to work.
The arrival this year of Pixar and Digital Domain, the Venice, Calif.-based company behind Academy Award-winning films Titanic and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, was a major coup. Both are rolling out large studios and hiring local staff.
The hope, of course, is that once these heavy-hitters settle in, more of their kind will follow. But just as there is some momentum, there is also a mini-snag on the horizon.
In a little known move by Ottawa, slated for this fall, there is a desire to protect jobs for Canadians, but the plan could backfire and hamstring the growth of hundreds of jobs in B.C.`s economy.
For years, going back to the late 1990s, high-tech companies have been able to nimbly usher in key talent from outside Canada by using a federal IT (information technology) worker category. Basically, it allowed companies based here to put together project teams on the fly.
"To deal with critical shortages, C.I.C. (Citizenship and Immigration Canada) and Service Canada (which issues temporary work visas) chose seven IT positions and exempted them," said Vancouver lawyer Craig Natsuhara, who advises several large digital media firms. "So if, say, EA (the video game maker with offices in Burnaby) has a new title, it could easily bring in three of these (designers, artists, programmers), or five of those."
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