CIMM Committee Report

Supplementary Opinion on the Report on International Students

Liberal Members of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration

Liberal Members of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration largely agree with the report as adopted by the committee following its study of the government’s changes to the international students program.

We wish to state that international students are an important part of Canadian society and Canada’s education system. Their diverse and unique perspectives contribute to the success of our local students and strengthen our education system. Most international students come here genuinely to study and improve themselves, and too many have been taken advantage of by unscrupulous actors. The students themselves should not be blamed for the actions of those bad actors or scapegoated for broader societal issues.

It is vitally important to ensure that international students are not blamed for the housing shortage or strain on other services. Canada had a housing issue for 30 years because successive governments at all three levels did not invest enough. The large influx of international students which where issued student visas at unprecedented levels exacerbated the problem rather than causing it.

We also wish to draw attention to the multijurisdictional nature of the international student program. While the federal government runs the immigration system and issues student visas to qualified applicants in receipt of a valid offer of admission to a designated learning institution (DLI), the provinces have constitutional authority for post-secondary education as well as responsibility for regulating and ensuring DLIs are providing a quality educational experience.

As the report notes, the federal government’s decision to implement a study permit cap was in the context of an unsustainable increase in international student admissions issued by DLIs, particularly in the Province of Ontario.

Prior to the introduction of the student cap, the federal government was obligated to simply process all applications by prospective students with a valid offer of admission from a DLI if they met the security criteria and demonstrated the ability to fund their studies.

Soyoung Park, Assistant Deputy Minister, Economic Programs for Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada, told the committee that “it is under the authority of provinces and territories to decide which institutions to designate. They do have ultimate authority over the education sector.” [1]

The committee heard how underfunding by the provinces led many DLIs to an overreliance on revenue from international students, further exacerbating and incentivizing them to take in more international students than they had the resources to support.

This was noted by Alex Usher, president of Higher Education Strategy Associates:

“You had provincial governments—mainly, but not exclusively, Conservative—that realized that if institutions could monetize this policy, Canadian governments didn't need to subsidize universities and colleges so much. This is great. Lots of people did that.”[2]

Witnesses also testified to the committee that tuition freezes set by the provinces, especially the Province of Ontario, have kept revenue for universities stuck in place and in some cases have lost institutions the revenue they need to operate.

Dr. Rob Kristofferson of the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations told the committee how this has in turn influenced institutions to turn to international students to make up for lost revenue:

“In the province of Ontario, similar to other jurisdictions in Canada, revenues for universities are based on a provincial grant per student, the tuition of students and international student income, plus some other smaller things. Since the economic crisis of 2008, the provincial grant has been essentially flat. In 2019, the provincial government reduced tuition by 10% and has frozen it there since, in a highly inflationary environment, so in order to make up revenues and keep afloat, universities, to some extent, turned to international students.”[3]

Therefore, we wish to make the following supplemental recommendations:

• That the provinces and territories, that are constitutionally responsible for education, ensure post-secondary institutions receive adequate and sustainable funding to provide a quality educational experience to domestic students.
• That the provinces and territories closely monitor and audit the institutions they certify as designated learning institutions to ensure they are providing a professional, quality educational experience for all students and that they have adequate resources to accommodate all they seek to admit as international students.