ICYMI – Urback: Canada does not owe international students a path to residency

Suspect this represents a majority view even if federal and provincial governments, along with education institutions, were complicit:

…None of this is fair in the very colloquial sense of the word. The Canadian government was explicitly marketing student visas as a path to permanent residency by inviting foreigners to “study, work and stay in Canada,” and prospective students responded in droves. In 2023-24, there were 428,077 student visa-holders in Canada, which was up nearly 50 per cent from just before the pandemic. And the reason why that number exploded was not because people from Punjab were suddenly ecstatic about the opportunity to learn hairdressing at the Eikonic Academy in Mississauga, but because everyone knew it was an easy way to start a new life in Canada. You could even work as much as you wanted while you ostensibly studied for a degree to take back home.

The Canadian government cannot and should not do anything now to placate the international students protesting for PGWP access, even though Ottawa played a major role in setting their expectations in the first place. Canadian residency cannot be for sale, even if the Canadian government dangled the prospect just a few years ago. This is an unfortunate outcome for those who risked everything to start a new life in Canada, but the process was always that: a risk. 

Source: Canada does not owe international students a path to residency