TORONTO — Canada’s international student immigration system is “out of control.” You can expect such a statement from a member of the opposition. Instead, a minister said so. And not even just any minister: the federal minister of Immigration, the one who should be the director of that “control”: Mark Miller. But his words actually sound like an accusation towards those who preceded him in the Ministry of Immigration: his cabinet colleague Sean Fraser. Bad vibes in Trudeau’s government…
In an interview aired today on CTV‘s Question Period hosted by Vassy Kapelos, Minister Miller said that the number of international students entering Canada is “staggering.”
“It really is a system that has gotten out of control,” he underlined, adding that in the coming months he will evaluate the possibility of putting a cap on the number of international students living in Canada, without however specifying what reduction the federal government intends to make.
“It’s a conversation that the federal government will have to have with the provincial governments to make sure that the provinces that haven’t done their job actually reduce those numbers on a regular basis,” the minister said.
The federal government has been criticized repeatedly for welcoming growing numbers of immigrants — both permanent and temporary residents — while the country faces a severe housing shortage. A recent Canadian Press report — citing internal documents obtained through an access-to-information request: read our previous article here — shows that the federal government was already warned two years ago by public officials that its ambitious immigration goals could jeopardize accessibility of housing. But Justin Trudeau’s Liberals have nevertheless set goals of welcoming 485,000 immigrants this year and 500,000 in both 2025 and 2026. Temporary residents, made up largely of international students and migrant workers, make up another part of the equation, with more than 300,000 of them arriving in Canada in the third quarter of last year alone.
Miller said he will look in both the first and second quarters of this year to cap international students to help reduce demand on housing. And when asked why his government is only considering a cap now, when such an idea has been floated for months, Miller responded that it needs to sort out the numbers at the federal level before looking with “a little more granularity ” what individual academic institutions are doing in different provinces, possibly profiting from the arrival of more international students. “We need to make sure that we have a system that actually ensures that people have the financial ability to come to Canada, that we are actually verifying offer letters,” Miller said.
A cap on international students would not be a “one-stop solution” to the housing shortage across Canada, Miller noted, however.
But when the CTV host further pressed him about the fact that the number of international students coming to Canada far exceeds the number of homes the federal government has announced it will help build, Miller said housing is “just part of the calculus when it comes to immigration goals.” And he reiterated that a cap on international students is something the federal government is considering “and will continue to consider.”