TORONTO – Canada will reduce the number of international student permits by 35 per cent as part of “a temporary two-year cap on foreign enrollments,” Federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller announced this morning. The cap will reduce the number of approved study permits in 2024 to 364,000, while the 2025 limit will be re-evaluated at the end of this year. Students enrolling in master’s and research doctorates will be exempt from the cap. “These are the bright people we need to retain instead,” Miller said, adding that doing so will allow them to decisively confront the institutions and “bad actors” who have to pay exorbitant tuition fees to international students.
Additionally, he added that a maximum space will be allocated per province based on population, meaning some provinces will see a steeper reduction in the number of international students admitted. The federal government has faced pressure from the provinces over the growing number of non-permanent residents entering Canada as the country grapples with an unprecedented housing crisis. In 2022, temporary study visits were issued to more than 800,000 international students. Miller said last fall that the 2023 numbers were on track to be even more: even more than triple the number accepted a decade ago.
The minister, today, was keen to underline that this limit is not intended to “punish” international students, who are “a precious resource for this country”, but to ensure that their experience and education are up to par. He added that it is “unacceptable that some private institutions” have “taken advantage” of international students by increasing tuition prices. “Those institutions need to be closed,” he said. He added that post-secondary institutions have been “underfunded by our provinces” in many regions, potentially incentivizing institutions to charge higher tuition fees for international students because they have less leeway to raise tuition for students national.
The idea of a limit on the number of international students had been circulating for months. Miller previously noted that a cap would not be a “one-size-fits-all solution” to the housing shortage, as inflation, lack of public housing and barriers to new construction are also all factors in the housing shortage itself . But it is still better than the inaction that Justin Trudeau’s government had shown so far even on such a delicate issue as the housing shortage in a country that professes itself as “welcoming”.
In the pic above, Federal Immigration Minister Mark Miller in a photo published on his Twitter X page – @MarcMillerVM