Canada’s Contradictory Approaches to International Students

Canada has long been one of the top destinations in the world for international students. Home to globally-renowned schools like McGill University and the University of Toronto, it is no surprise that Canada has seen much debate on how to approach the status of international students: Are they good for the economy, as they are often wealthy and spend more money in Canada? Should they be granted an easier path to citizenship? This has been a contentious issue, and the government has attempted to address it in recent years by adopting new caps on the number of students allowed to study in Canada, also making it more difficult to immigrate to the country upon graduation. The repercussions of these caps have been reflected in the lower number of international students in Canada compared to past years, with impending economic ramifications still underway. 

In 2016, the Advisory Council on Economic Growth was created, which determined in a report released in the fall of 2016 that Canada's permanent immigration numbers should increase dramatically. At the time, Canada’s struggling economy and aging population deemed this to be a potential solution. The goal of this initiative was to focus on recruiting top business talent, high-skilled workers, and international students. Such strategies were common among many countries in the 2010s, as these nations faced the issue of shifting demographics. The report concluded that Canada’s working-age population would decrease, and increased immigration could be a way of mitigating that problem. In the past ten years, there have been continuous cuts to provincial and federal education funding. With international students paying significantly higher tuition than Canadians and the government’s decision to pursue high-skilled immigrants, the number of international students enrolled in post-secondary educational institutions has doubled by 2022, while Canadian student enrollment has decreased by 5.7%. 

Beginning in the 2020s, the policy of increased immigration has come under increasing scrutiny, as the housing crisis has continued to grip Canadian cities. In the most recent federal election, both Conservative leader Pierre Pollievre and the Liberal Party candidate Mark Carney vowed to decrease immigration numbers, with Pierre Pollievre especially focused on international students. According to a survey issued by Environics Institute, a majority of Canadians in recent years have said that there is too much immigration, meaning that politicians have begun exploring changing Canadian immigration policy dramatically. 

Not only has public opinion shifted against immigration, but there has also been a crackdown on so-called “diploma mills,”  unregulated institutions that distribute higher education degrees illegally for those without academic standing, many of which are especially prevalent in Ontario and British Columbia. One notable development in the crackdown on these schools, which are mainly private, is that those who graduate will no longer be eligible for the Post-Graduation Work Permits (PGWP), which allows students who have graduated from Canadian universities to remain in the country after graduation to look for a job. 

There has been both political and civil pressure to change the approach towards immigration. Politicians have voted to make certain reforms in an attempt to decrease the number of international students in Canada. In 2024, Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) capped the number of study permit applications at 437,000 permits, a 10 percent decrease from 2024 to “help ease the strain [that provinces may have] on housing, health care and other services.” Each province now gets an allocated number of study permits made available to it, and includes both undergraduate and graduate students, “to ensure the number of graduate international students remains well managed.” Ontario receives the most with 116,740, and Nunavut gets the fewest with 220. The question that remains is whether these reforms will be enough to change the tide and effect real change. 

One of the main motivators behind the rising anti-immigrant sentiment in Canada has been the housing crisis, a top issue for many Canadian voters. In the recent federal election, Poilievre argued that the large number of immigrants has caused the rising housing prices. With the number of international students steadily increasing over the years, it has been easy for politicians to blame these groups. Targeting international students has become a particular interest for politicians in Canada due to the large number of students across the country. There has been growing proof that international students, and immigrants overall, do not hurt the housing market, contrary to what many politicians have often claimed. Researchers at the University of Waterloo in Ontario found that many international students are particularly vulnerable to rental scams. Other researchers have found that international students and immigrants at large are not to blame for the housing crisis. Capping the number of international students is a simple policy that does not necessarily address the greater issues facing the Canadian housing market. 

The most immediate result of the new IRCC caps is that permits have decreased by almost 90,000. It is not only an outcome of new restrictions on diploma mills, but is also due to shifts in attitudes among Canadians towards immigrants, pushing away potential students, who feel the new policies have made Canada seem unwelcoming. This policy overlooks the reasons why international students have been so heavily recruited by Canadian universities in the past. Universities have suffered for years from tuition freezes and provincial funding cuts, which have made international students more attractive to the universities. International students pay significantly more than domestic students at Canadian universities, with the average international undergraduate student paying $41,746 versus the average for Canadians, which is $7,734. To keep up with increasing costs, universities have also increasingly had to turn to international students to fill these financial gaps. As the number of international students is poised to continue decreasing, the issue of how to fund universities remains. 

The new IRCC fails to address the root causes of the problems facing Canadians and Canadian universities. Immigrants have long been seen as an easy group to target, and these policies do not provide solutions for the years of ongoing cuts that have been plaguing Canadian universities. Most undergraduate international students do not stay in Canada long after graduation, with numbers being higher among Master's and Doctoral students. They have been pursued due to the history of funding cuts that higher education has been facing. The government has not offered a solution to that aspect of the problem. The effects of this evolving attitude towards international students are yet to be fully seen. However, they are not a solution to the problems facing Canada and do not address the lackluster funding that universities have been receiving recently.