Canada on Monday announced a two-year cap on international student visas to ease the pressure on housing, health care and other services at a time of record immigration.
Immigration Minister Marc Miller said that there will be a 35 per cent reduction in new study visas in 2024. He said that the international students program has been exploited by institutions offering “sham” degrees, putting pressure on housing and health care.
“It’s a bit of a mess, and it’s time to rein it in,” Miller said.
The number of new visas handed out will be capped at 364,000. Nearly 560,000 such visas were issued last year.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Cabinet retreat in Montreal this week will prioritize affordability and housing, according to a government statement.
The government said that there are about 1 million foreign students in the country now, and without any intervention, this number would keep increasing. The total number of foreign students is more than three times what it was a decade ago.
Miller said that officials have been working on stabilizing the number of people entering the country yearly as housing pressures mount.
Canada grew by about 1 million people last year, reaching a record of 40 million, as many Canadians struggle with an increased cost of living, including rents and mortgages.
The immigration minister said that there are unscrupulous schools that accept high tuition fees from 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,” Miller said.
“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 program,” he said.
The leader of the opposition Conservative Party of Canada, Pierre Poilievre, called it a mess and blamed Trudeau for granting study permits to tens of thousands of students who attend fake schools.
“The housing crisis is complex and many factors have created it over time. Admitting fewer foreign students during the next two years can’t solve the crisis on its own,” said Daniel Béland, a political science professor at McGill University in Montreal.
“It’s too early to say, but it’s especially challenging for (Trudeau) in Quebec, a province where Trudeau’s Liberals need to keep as many seats as possible if they want to remain in power after the next federal elections.”
