Cap on foreign students doesn’t go far enough

From 2021 to 2022, the number of international students in Canada grew 116 per cent. In 2023, it rose another 60 per cent, to roughly 900,000. In 2000, Canada had just 122,665 international students. We now have seven times that number.

Part of the problem is a rush in applications after pandemic restrictions were lifted. But Ottawa predicts the growth in applications will continue — reaching 1.4 million in 2027. If so, foreign students will continue to be a significant element in Canada’s record population growth — and in the attendant pressure on housing, infrastructure and health care.

What was supposed to be an education vehicle is now seen by many as an alternative work visa program and a path to Canadian citizenship. From 2000-19, the number of international students with T4 earnings increased to 354,000 from 22,000. Over the same period, their labour force participation rate increased to 50 per cent from 18 per cent.

The shift in focus toward employment was intensified by the federal government’s decision in 2022 to allow some students to work 40 hours per week — double the previous limit. Set to expire at the end of 2023, that policy was extended to April 30.

When allowable work hours were extended in 2022, then-immigration minister Sean Fraser justified the move as alleviating domestic labour shortages. And in a startlingly honest moment last November, his successor, Marc Miller, defended high international student numbers by explaining that “industry and lowskilled labour” are “looking for cheap labour.”

Applicants increasingly see a study permit as a springboard to permanent residency in Canada. According to a 2021 survey, 60 per cent of international students intend to apply for permanent residence in Canada — a strategy made much easier by the Trudeau government’s 2016 restoration of the rule, scrapped by the Harper government, that time spent on a study permit can count toward the physical residency requirement for permanent residency.

But now, after eight years of dramatic increases, the Trudeau government is finally capping international student numbers — though so far only for two years. In 2024, 360,000 undergraduate study permits will be approved, 35 per cent fewer than in 2023, while the number for 2025 will be determined at the end of this year. Each province and territory is getting a cap based on its population, which Ottawa hopes will spur provincial crackdowns on diploma mills.

Though certainly an improvement, a temporary cap does not address the underlying problems with the international student program. Its numbers did not soar to 900,000 because of the world’s sudden affection for double-doubles or snow drifts. What brings people here in such numbers is the opportunity to work and obtain permanent residency.

We need to reverse the federal government’s shift of the international student program’s focus toward employment and citizenship. A complete prohibition on working off-campus would remove the employment attraction entirely and set a clear precedent for future governments that the international student program is not merely a supplementary foreign worker program. It would also send a clear message to prospective applicants: the student program is an educational vehicle, not a backdoor to immigration. No longer allowing time spent as a foreign student to count toward citizenship would remove the second big non-academic attraction.

But doesn’t Canada benefit when skilled foreign graduates becoming citizens? If they can find places to live, yes, almost certainly. But their home countries probably need their educated selves far more. Contributing to the Global South’s brain drain hardly fits with Canada’s humanitarian aspirations.

If reforms along these lines were enacted, we would be left with a smaller number of international students, each more eager to contribute to cultural exchange in Canadian universities, study hard and then return home with fond associations for this country, as well as the expertise needed to build up their home countries.

With political will, a program that has become a backdoor to immigration could become a worthy educational vehicle once more.