By Pat Bell, Minister of Jobs, Tourism and Innovation
Naomi Yamamoto, Minister of Advanced Education
Ida Chong, Minister of Community, Sport and Cultural Development

On the second day of Premier Christy Clark's second Jobs and Trade Mission to Japan, Korea, and the Philippines she will be meeting with a Tokyo-based company called DeNA. The Premier is there to thank DeNA, an internationally recognized digital media company, for choosing to set up a new office in Vancouver, DeNA Studios Canada. That said, we think it was an easy choice - undergraduate, graduate and professional programs in B.C. are building a growing and highly qualified pool of talent that has established our province as a global leader in digital design and media.

British Columbia's digital media sector is among the world's top performers. It is comprised of over 600 companies employing approximately 16,000 people, with revenues of over $2 billion a year. The sector is particularly strong in interactive design, game development and digital film/animation.

Last year, more than a thousand students undertook training in a variety of programs ranging from animation to digital graphic design. Based on recent surveys, nearly 90 per cent of the grads in these and other important programs indicated satisfaction with the training, and more importantly, that these skills were applicable to job performance.

As a measure of British Columbia's commitment to the sector, the Centre for Digital Media was established in Vancouver--a collaboration between the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT), Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, Simon Fraser University (SFU) and the University of British Columbia (UBC). The Centre for Digital Media offers Canada's first graduate program in digital media; one of a small number of specialized graduate programs in North America that teach advanced topics in the business and creative management of digital media. The program aims to create a digital media hub in Vancouver that will drive growth, competitiveness and innovation in the sector from coast to coast.

In fact, in addition to having the greatest number of interactive games companies in Canada, providing close to 3,900 jobs, Vancouver is home to a large number of international video game publishers including Electronic Arts, DeNA, THQ and Vivendi/Activision. The EA studio in Burnaby is the largest of its kind in the world.

Microsoft is another example of a major technology company providing well paying jobs to British Columbians. About 300 people are employed at the Microsoft Games Studio at facilities in Vancouver and Victoria, handling sports games, core games (shooting, action/adventure and racing) and children's' games.

B.C. also has the fourth largest film and television industry in North America. Several B.C. post-secondary institutions such as BCIT, Capilano University and Emily Carr provide the education and real-world training necessary to build British Columbia's thriving film and animation industries--an industry that employs 35,000 people and injects more than $2 billion annually into the provincial economy. With the opening of the Nat and Flora Bosa Centre at Capilano University, B.C. boasts the largest full-time, film degree program in Western Canada.

The number of highly skilled technology students coming out of these post-secondary institutions has recently attracted Sony Pictures Imageworks, which announced an expansion in March, doubling its Vancouver workspace for visual effects and digital animation. The company cited a strong local talent base and favourable tax incentives as reasons for the expansion, which will be in a location separate from the original studio that Imageworks established when it added operations in Vancouver in 2010.

These recent investments are a clear signal that foreign countries are taking advantage of the digital media skills and talent found here in British Columbia. Post-secondary education is vital to B.C.'s competitive, digital edge in the global marketplace and with a variety of world-class programs to choose from, students in B.C. are set to find well-paying jobs to support their families and lead the next generation in the booming new media market.