Wells: The end of the high-value economy [immigration aspects]

The usual insightful and acerbic Paul Wells:

….We are going to go on a bit of a stroll today, so before I go further I should emphasize that I see nothing wrong with students from anywhere taking jobs as baristas or dog walkers. I think jobs at pubs or with Uber are a valuable part of the international student experience, and I congratulate Edvoy for their success in connecting young people with Canada’s community colleges and its gig-worker economy. 

But surely all this is useful context for the news that Sean Fraser was told in 2022, while he was immigration minister, that removing the 20-hour weekly cap on work international students could perform would “detract from the primary study goal of international students… circumvent the temporary foreign worker programs and give rise to further program integrity concerns with the international student program.” With that information in hand, Fraser took the 20-hour cap off anyway.

That’s because Fraser attached more value to the first thing the memo said, which was that increasing hours worked would help alleviate labour shortages. In other words, immediate post-COVID Canada was a place where the big problem was the limited number of people available to work. Bringing in more international students was a quick way to address that, and letting them work nearly full-time would help too. 

Ontario became Ground Zero for the rapid increase in enrolment for college students. That’s because Ontario premier Doug Ford was transfixed with what he called a “historic labour shortage” and eager to attract more people to the province — from other provinces, from outside Canada, seriously, wherever. I was told at the time that when Ford and Justin Trudeau met soon after the 2022 elections in Ontario and Quebec returned the incumbents, the PM bonded with Ford by complaining about Quebec’s François Legault behind Legault’s back, because Legault was still trying to limit immigration while Ford wanted the roof blown off. 

A certain creative laxity in international-student visa distribution permitted the overlap between Ford’s interests, Trudeau’s and those of Ontario’s community colleges: Ford could address his labour shortage, at least at the lower end of the skills ladder (I assume international students are often highly skilled and eager to increase their human capital, but in the meantime they’re dog walkers). Trudeau could goose the economy during a shaky period when a lot of people were worried about the prospects of recession. And Ontario’s colleges could enjoy a revenue bonanza, at a time when most other sources of funding for Ontario higher education are capped. Alex Usher’s been covering that part all along….

Source: The end of the high-value economy