ICYMI: Star editorial – An influx of international students is straining the system. But don’t blame the students.

Good editorial, making the necessary linkages between the various responsibilities behind the “lucrative” incentive that has brought us to where we are today. And whether it is caps or “systematically manag[ing] international student intake, the net result will have to be fewer but higher quality international students:

It must once have seemed like a simple matter. Invite international students to attend Canadian universities and colleges and in the process gain a lucrative source of revenue to help fund those systems.

Now, however, it has become something of a Gordian knot. With about 900,000 international students expected to enter Canada this year, landing in the middle of a persistent housing crisis, tackling one element of this issue exacerbates a problem elsewhere.

The students often feel gouged, lack adequate supports, are subject to exploitation and can end up in dire or unsafe circumstances.

The issue demonstrates how inter-connected this challenge is, affecting not just education and housing, but also employment and immigration policy. There are many vested interests and not all of them put a priority on the students.

The post-secondary system has become economically dependent on these students because of the higher tuition they pay. In Ontario they accounted for 30 per cent of college enrolment in 2021 but 68 per cent of tuition.

So, too, have employers, many of them in the service sector who rely on student labour. Earlier this year the federal government temporarily eliminated the 20-hour-a-week limit on work by international students.

Meanwhile, many students are attracted to Canada by the prospect of gaining permanent residence through acquiring a Canadian education and work permit — a fast track exploited by some.

In all, it is a knotty problem not easily untangled. Cutting it will involve some pain and no small jurisdictional wrangling.

At the federal cabinet retreat in Charlottetown last week, Housing Minister Sean Fraser floated the notion of a cap on foreign students. But what at first blush might seem the easiest solution would merely bring its own set of problems, not least of which would be rationing international students among schools and effectively creating financial boons for some and crises for others.

Some schools have already objected to the idea of a cap, saying that building more student housing is a better way to ease demands for rental accommodation.

Part of the solution must involve schools doing a better job to ensure the well-being of the students whose tuition money they happily accept. As Fraser said, if schools are going to recruit record numbers of international students, they are going to have to do a better job of housing them.

The immigration department has said the federal government will need to have discussions with the provinces, which have jurisdiction over education, about the pressure on cash-strapped post-secondary institutions to use international students as cash cows.

As well, Fraser said, attention must be paid by provinces to separating legitimate educational institutions from the exploitative private schools that have sprung up to cash in on international students. The partnerships between public and private colleges to to educate international students and then provide access to a postgraduate work permit is overdue for closer scrutiny.

But there will be no quick fix. The problem is sufficiently complex to require a set of solutions.

They suggested a process to more systematically manage international student intake and to reset expectations of applicants about their ability to come to Canada and what a student visa promises.

Governments and schools must take responsibility for recruiters they contract who have marketed the international student program as an easy pathway to immigration.

“It is an ecosystem in Canada that is very lucrative and it’s come with some perverse effects: some fraud in the system, some people taking advantage of what is seen as a backdoor entry into Canada, but also pressure in a number of areas – one of those is housing,” Immigration Minister Marc Miller told CBC’s The House.

But it is a problem largely of our own making, born of that word “lucrative.” It is a discredit to Canada, to the provinces responsible for education, to employers, to post-secondary institutions themselves that happily take their money, that students aren’t better supported.

Source: An influx of international students is straining the system. But don’t blame the students.