Marco Vigliotti is the editor-in-chief of iPolitics and QP Briefing. He reports on politics in Ottawa and Toronto, and has covered Parliament Hill for the better part of the past decade. He also worked for the Ottawa Citizen/Sun and The Hill Times.

Marco Vigliotti

Editor-in-Chief

Davis Legree

Reporter

Canada is temporarily limiting the number of new international students it will accept into the country.

Immigration Minister Marc Miller made the announcement Monday in Montreal during a cabinet retreat ahead of the start of the new parliamentary session next week.

He said the decision will result in 364,000 approved student permits starting in 2024, a 35 per cent decrease. The cap will be in place for two years.

“It’s unacceptable that some private institutions have taken advantage of international students by operating under-resourced campuses lacking supports for students and charging high tuition fees, all the while significantly increasing their intake of international students,” Miller told reporters.

“It would be a disservice to welcome international students to Canada knowing not all of them are getting the resources they need to succeed.”

Miller explained that there would be cap for each province and territory weighed by their population, meaning some of the provinces will see larger drops. For example, Miller said Ontario could expect to see around a 50 per cent decrease in permits.

“We first and foremost wanted to address the matters that were within pretty much exclusive federal jurisdiction, which is fraud, integrity of the intake system, and verification of offer letters,” said Miller. “We warned provinces throughout the fall that they needed to start taking measures.”

Miller added that he’s since had productive conversations with B.C. Post-Secondary Education Minister Selina Robinson, as well as Ontario Colleges and Universities Minister Jill Dunlop, but that the provinces were not taking action as quickly as the feds had hoped.

“It is not the intention of this program to have sham commerce or business degrees that are sitting on top of a massage parlour that someone doesn’t even go to and then they come into the province and drive an Uber,” said Miller.

“Those institutions need to be shut down and it’s up to the provinces to do that.”

Dunlop said international students provide meaningful benefits to Ontario, but that some bad actors are exploiting the system by taking advantage of students with “false promises of guaranteed employment.”

“We’ve been engaging with the federal government on ways to crack down on these practices, like predatory recruitment,” read the statement. “We also need to work together to ensure the students coming to Canada receive an education that is responsive to Ontario’s labour needs, especially in the skilled trades. As we do, we have a joint responsibility to ensure the stability of the postsecondary sector and the success of its students.”

Graduate-level students are mostly exempted from the changes, as are current students looking to extend their studies.

The decision was met immediately with support from the group representing career colleges, though it cautioned that the minister was mistaken about the sorts of students that are in need in Canada.

“We are concerned to hear the minister state that graduate-level international students are ‘what we are looking for’,” said Michael Sangster, president of from the National Association of Career Colleges (NACC), “when Canada is in desperate need of health care workers, tradespeople to build more houses, early childcare educators, and truck drivers — jobs and training where NACC members flourish.

Sangster said regulated career colleges (RCCs) mostly train domestic learners to become the skilled workers and represents “less than 10 per cent of study permit applications,” adding that unlike public institutions, “our sector is not reliant on international student tuition or public funding to succeed and contribute meaningfully to our economy.”

“There are many good examples across provincial jurisdictions where innovative education solutions are making a real impact on workforce shortages and these should be replicated,” he said.

“We call on the minister to release more complete data to paint an accurate picture of our international student ecosystem so that public institutions and policymakers stop scapegoating RCCs and instead look inward to offer collaborative solutions.”

Meanwhile, the national organization representing Canada’s universities expressed concerns about how the cap could “add stress on an already stressed system,” but reserved judgement until they had more details.

“Until more information is provided as to how each province will be rolling out this new program, it is difficult to comment on its effect on Canada’s universities,” read a statement from Universities Canada. “We do welcome the announcement that current study permit holders will not be affected, that Master’s and PhD students will be exempt from the cap and that they will soon be eligible to apply for a three-year work permit.”

Jenny Kwan, the NDP’s housing and immigration critic, used the announcement to criticize the government’s record, accusing the feds of scapegoating international students for a problem they’ve helped create.

“The government’s newly imposed cap might punish talented students who seek to build a better life and thrive—that’s the wrong way to address the problem that needs to be addressed,” said Kwan in a statement. “The Liberal government also knew that international students were being scammed by bad actors, but they didn’t act to fix it fast enough. The Liberals are always dragging their feet instead of fixing the problems before they get worse.”

Instead of punishing students, the NDP strongly believes that the government could have worked with universities and colleges to ensure they have a plan to house those students or add a requirement of having a place to live for international students wanting to study in Canada.”

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre echoed Kwan’s critiques during a news conference in West Vancouver, where he blamed Housing Minister Sean Fraser for letting the international student situation spiral.

“[Prime Minister Justin Trudeau] is retreating on that by cutting back by over 150,000 the number of international students,” said Poilievre. “This is a problem of his own making. His own incompetent, incompetent and incompetent minister, Sean Fraser, was the one that allowed the program to grow — in the words of another Liberal minister — out of control.”

“We don’t need the prime minister to change, we need to change the prime minister.”

Poilievre later added that he agreed a cap on permits was the right way to address the problem, while emphasizing that it should never have became a problem.

Fraser, who preceded Miller in the immigration portfolio, said the measure could result in some easing of housing pressures in cities with institutions that admit a lot of international students, specifically mentioning Peel Region in Ontario.

“We do see there’s certain pockets of the country that have seen a significant increase in population growth as a result of institutions taking on more students than they can handle,” said Fraser. “I anticipate in some of those communities, fewer students that may come to Canada as a result, you may see some pressure alleviated.”

“The precise impact we will know once we actually see a change in the numbers over the next couple of years.”

Fraser said he considered implementing a similar policy during his stint as immigration minister, but that he wanted to give the provinces an adequate amount of time to address the problem themselves.

“My sense is that there are certain governments that have a challenge with the program, they see an opportunity for post-secondary institutions to receive funding that doesn’t have to be provided for with provincial budgets,” said Fraser. “You look at the investments that have been made in the province of Ontario compared to other provinces in post-secondary education over the last number of years, and you can see that as the investment didn’t keep pace with other provinces, the international student numbers went up significantly.”

“I don’t want to speak to what the motivation might have been for those provinces at the time to resist implementing the kind of reforms that they had the opportunity to deal with, but I’d suggest that’s a question appropriately put to some of my provincial counterparts.”

The feds plan to assess the number of study permits to be issued in 2025 at the end of this calendar year. For Miller, this temporary measure gives the government a two-year window to course correct.

“We have two years to get the ship in order,” he said. “It’s a bit of a mess and it’s time to rein it in.”

*This story has been updated to include various quotes and statements.

As part of the temporary cap on new permits, Immigration Minister Marc Miller said Ontario would be among those most impacted. 

Ontario could see around 50% decrease in international student permits: Miller

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