Ottawa: Canada on Monday announced a two-year cap on international student visas to ease pressure on housing, healthcare and other essential services at a time of record immigration. Canada's Immigration Minister Marc Miller announced that there will be a 35 per cent reduction in new study visas in 2024 as the international students' programme has been taken advantage of by "fraudulent activity" and burdened the country's housing and healthcare system.
According to the minister, the number of new visas handed out will be capped at 364,000, after nearly 560,000 student visas were issued last year. According to a government student, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's cabinet retreat in Montreal this week will prioritise affordability and housing. Miller also said they have been working on stabilising the number of people entering the country yearly as housing pressures mount.
The government said there are around 1 million foreign students in the country now - more than three times a decade ago - and without any sort of intervention, this number would have continued to increase. Canada's population reached a record 40 million as several Canadians reportedly struggled with an increased cost of living, including rents and mortgages.
Offering more details, Miller said there are unscrupulous schools taking advantage of high tuition fees paid by foreign students without offering a solid education in return. In some cases, the schools are a way into Canada for students who can parlay their visas into permanent residencies.
“It is not the intention of this program to have sham commerce degrees 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. If you need a dedicated channel for Uber drivers in Canada, I can design that, but that isn't the intention of the international student programme,” said the immigration minister.
Opposition Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre called the government's latest move to cap international student visas "a mess" and blamed Trudeau for granting study permits to tens of thousands of students who attend fake schools.
Who will be impacted?
The new proposals will also set limits on post-graduate work permits issued to foreign students, which will likely encourage them to return to their home countries. People pursuing master's or post-doctorate programs will be eligible for a three-year work permit in Canada. Spouses of international students enrolled in other levels of study, including undergraduate and college programs, will no longer be eligible, Miller said.
The vast majority of international students come from India and China. About 40 per cent of foreign students come from India, with China coming in second with about 12%, according to official data from 2022. However, Canada experienced a major 86 per cent decline in the issuance of study permits to Indian students towards the end of last year, owing to the diplomatic dispute over the murder of a Sikh separatist terrorist in Surrey.
International students contribute about C$22 billion ($16.4 billion) annually to the Canadian economy. The move will hurt many educational institutions that had expanded their campuses in the hope of a continued inflow of students. Ontario, the most populous province, receives the biggest share of international students, where the cap has fuelled concerns about a shortage of workers.
Restaurants across Canada are grappling with labour shortages with nearly 100,000 vacancies, and international students made up 4.6 per cent of 1.1 million workers in the food service industry in 2023, a lobby group told Reuters last week. Canadian banks had also benefited from the immigration of new students, as each student was required to have a Guaranteed Investment Certificates (GIC) of more than C$20,000, a prerequisite to cover living expenses for the students.
Why is Canada doing this?
Canada has emerged as a popular destination for international students since it is relatively easy to obtain work permits after finishing courses. However, rents nationwide rose 7.7 per cent from a year earlier, according to data-tracking website Statscan. The housing crisis has been blamed on an increase in migrants and international students fuelling demand for homes just as inflation has slowed construction.
Trudeau's popularity has been dented mainly due to the affordability crisis as Pollievre has taken a commanding lead over the Canadian PM in opinion polls ahead of an election next year. Apart from the rental crisis, the government has also been concerned about the quality of education provided by some of the institutions.
"Right now we have a challenge with the sheer volume of students coming in. It's just gotten out of control and needs to be reduced - I would say - significantly over a short period of time," Miller said earlier. The Liberal government floated the idea of capping the number of foreign student visas in August, but Housing Minister Sean Fraser said then that the government had not yet made a decision on whether to pursue that option.
(with inputs from agencies)
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