Has Canada overshot its mark in cutting international student enrolment? What the latest study permit data shows

2025/01/24 Leave a comment

But actual study permits finalized (new and renewals/extensions) shows a decline of 36 percent from 2023 full year to November 2024, or on target. So not overshooting if one includes all study permits, both new and renewals/extensions:

Ottawa issued 45 per cent fewer new study permits in 2024 according to the latest immigration data, a much steeper cut than it had planned when it unleashed policy changes a year ago to reduce international students in Canada.

The government’s measures were meant to primarily target post-secondary international students in what Immigration Minister Marc Miller has called “diploma mill” colleges, but the changes and messaging around its study permit scheme have had spillover impacts on all levels of studies.

Based on study permit processing and approval data from January through October 2024 — the peak of student intake — a new report by ApplyBoard projected Canada’s yearly study permit approvals would decline by 45 per cent from 2023, resulting in a maximum of just 280,000 admissions across all study levels from K-12 to postgraduate studies….

Source: Has Canada overshot its mark in cutting international student enrolment? What the latest study permit data shows

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Canada’s immigration department cutting 3,300 jobs, prompting concerns over backlogs and processing times

2025/01/21 Leave a comment

The federal immigration department will reduce its workforce by more than 20 per cent, sparking concerns over further backlogs and longer processing times for applications.

On Monday, immigration staff were told that 3,300 jobs are going to be eliminated and details would follow in mid-February, according to the Canada Employment and Immigration Union, which represents 35,000 employees at Immigration, Service Canada, Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) and the refugee board.

“Immigration processing wait times continued to reach record-breaking backlog levels, and these cuts will only worsen an already dire situation,” Rubina Boucher, the union’s national president, said in a statement.

“Families longing to reunite, businesses grappling with critical labour shortages and a health-care system desperate for skilled workers will all suffer the consequences of this reckless decision.”

The news of the layoffs followed the Liberal government’s plan to reduce the number of new permanent and temporary residents admitted to Canada in the coming three years in its attempt to slow down the country’s population growth amid the affordability crisis.

It also came in the wake of the department’s recent decisions to significantly cut funding to organizations that assist newcomers with settlement and integration through employment-related services, language training and community support.

Between 2020 and 2023, the Immigration Department’s workforce grew from 9,207 to 13,685 — about 30 per cent of whom were contract, “casual” and students — to beef up its operational capacity to deal with backlogs created during the pandemic and meet the federal government’s then targets to raise immigration levels.

As of late November, the department had 2,267,700 permanent and temporary immigration applications in the system; more than one million of them had exceeded its own targeted processing times. Overall, 38 per cent of permanent residence applications and 54 per cent of temporary residence applications in the queue were considered backlogged.

While it’s too early to know if this would simply mean a diversion of staff to other areas of government operations such as the asylum system, Toronto immigration lawyer Rick Lamanna of the Fragomen law firm said immigration applicants to Canada should expect some processing delays moving forward. 

Source: Canada’s immigration department cutting 3,300 jobs, prompting concerns over backlogs and processing times



Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Canada’s plan to reduce immigration levels leaves newcomer organizations scrambling with ‘off-the-cliff’ funding cuts

2025/01/21 Leave a comment

Reduced levels means reduced demand for services, so it should not come as a complete surprise to the settlement sector:

Newcomer Oleksandr Krestych and his wife Olena have been taking English classes full-time while working full-time since they arrived from Ukraine in 2022.

The couple — him an orthopedic surgeon and her a dermatologist — know learning the language is key to their success in Canada. They’ve made progress, moving from basic English courses that helped navigate day-to-day life to now focusing on language training for employment and professional communication. 

Every weekday, they attend classes at Enhanced English Skills for Employment in Winnipeg from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. before heading to a 3:30-to-11:30 p.m. job assembling fibre-optic cables in a factory.

“It’s hard and tiring,” said Krestych, 50. “But it helps improve our English so we can get better jobs and improve our life.”

However, after their last class at the end of this month, the couple must find another school — if they can find one with available spots.

Enhanced English Skills for Employment has been informed its current Immigration Department funding agreement, worth $650,000 a year, will not be renewed when it ends on March 31.

Across Canada, excluding Quebec, the Immigration Department is axing funding to organizations that assist newcomers with settlement and integration through employment-related services, language training and community support programs.

The cuts follow the reduction in immigration targets announced by Immigration Minister Marc Miller in October, which aims to welcome 395,000 new permanent residents in 2025, 380,000 in 2026 and 365,000 in 2027 — a 20 per cent drop from 485,000 last year.

The Immigration Department is also reducing the new funding cycle from five to three years, making long-term planning harder for funded agencies. Additionally, it will only continue funding English classes beyond level 4 of the Canadian Language Benchmark until September 2026.

“With funding being tied to the number of past arrivals and future admissions, the funding for settlement services has also been readjusted downward, at first by a small amount in 2025-26 and then further in the following fiscal years,” it told the Star in an email.

Funding allocated for settlement services outside of Quebec will drop from about $1.17B in 2024-25 and $1.12B in 2025-26, it said, adding that funding decisions are based on the number of newcomers expected, the needs for those accessing services, relationships with partner organizations and available resources.

The immigrant settlement sector said it’s been caught off guard by the “off-the-cliff” cuts that were made without consultation and enough time to wind down programs to minimize impacts on clients and staff, most of whom are immigrant women from racialized communities.

“While the funding cuts happened, the folks these agencies are seeing now are not going away,” said Debbie Douglas, executive director of the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants, which has more than 240 member organizations.

“We don’t anticipate a reduction in service demand, but we certainly will see a reduction in services available.”

Kathryn Friesen, executive of the Alberta Association of Immigrant Serving Agencies, warns that recent cuts to settlement services funding will leave many newcomers vulnerable amid an economic slowdown and affordability crisis.

Douglas said her member organizations in Ontario are expected to see a modest one per cent reduction in federal settlement funding for 2025 and up to 20 per cent next year. However, the Toronto District School Board is set to lose a third of its federal funding for newcomer language training, closing five learning sites as of March 31 and reducing its program capacity from 2,485 to 1,800 learners. Its enhanced language training programs will be phased out over two years.

Due to the exponential immigration growth following the pandemic, including newcomers from Afghanistan and Ukraine, some service providers have already been struggling with waiting lists for programs, especially in language training.

The Star has learned that Western provinces are hardest hit, though provincial bodies representing the settlement sector are still trying to calculate the extent and impacts of the cuts. Some service providers are desperately trying to find alternative funding sources while making plans to move clients to unaffected agencies.  

In B.C., more than 20 organizations have been completely defunded, with others facing funding reduction ranging from 15 per cent to 75 per cent. In Alberta, some groups faced cuts as deep as 35 per cent. In Manitoba, at least 12 agencies have lost their entire funding.

Kathryn Friesen, executive director of the Alberta Association of Immigrant Serving Agencies, said the cuts could not have come at a worse time, as recent newcomers are the most vulnerable to the current affordability crisis, soft job market and economic slowdown.

“It’s a small investment to help people upon arrival reach success a lot sooner than if they’re having to go it alone to navigate so many of the systems that they have to navigate,” said Friesen, whose umbrella group has 60 organizational members.

And newcomers’ journeys are not linear, and they may access supports at different stages of their settlement. 

Karen Sawatzky, executive director of the Hecate Strait Employment Development Society, expresses frustration over losing funding after a decade of service, leaving her remote community in Prince Rupert without crucial settlement support.

“Settlement services continue to be essential to those already here,” said Katie Crocker, CEO of the Affiliations of Multicultural Societies and Service Agencies of BC, in a statement. The group is made up of 94 member organizations.

Newcomers “depend on settlement supports to integrate and thrive in their communities. The settlement and integration sector’s specialized and crucial support better equips immigrants to contribute to Canada’s social and economic growth, enriching communities across the country.”

Both large and small agencies are impacted by the cuts. In B.C., for example, the Vancouver Community College has lost its entire $4 million yearly funding for language training for 2,400 students; the Hecate Strait Employment Development Society will have its entire $150,000 support axed.

The latter serves newcomers in remote Prince Rupert, 1,500 kilometres north of Vancouver, and the agency will have to send clients to organizations in Terrace, which is at least 90 minutes away by car.

“We have yet to sit down with someone at immigration and have them tell me why they declined us funding after providing these services for 10 years,” said its executive director Karen Sawatzky.

“They have not given us a clear (transition) plan. I’ve been in touch informally with the other service providers to help each other.” 

At Winnipeg’s Enhanced Language Skills for Employment, its executive director Louise Giesbrecht has to let go of six language instructors and some administration staff. She is knocking on the doors of the province and charitable foundations to fill the impossible gap. 

While her biggest concern is where to send current students and the 400 on the waiting list, she is busy trying to find the money for staff’s accrued vacation pay and closing costs on things such as shedding documents to comply with client privacy terms, emptying offices and getting rid of furniture.

Source: Canada’s plan to reduce immigration levels leaves newcomer organizations scrambling with ‘off-the-cliff’ funding cuts

Filed under Integration Tagged with , , , ,

Public service job cuts loom as Ottawa misses spending and deficit targets

2024/11/18 Leave a comment

Will likely be brutal with a change in government:

…Some argue part of the problem is today’s bureaucrats aren’t used to austerity and have only known growth for the past decade.

Today’s leaders may have been in the public service during the Harper government’s downsizing, but few were in senior positions directly responsible for managing those cuts. Back then, the government did regular strategic reviews, which were key to identifying budget cuts and the thousands of jobs that were eliminated. The Liberals had pledged a similar strategic review in their election platform, but it has yet to materialize, leaving some to question how prepared departments are to tackle current fiscal pressures.

It’s unclear what progress the government had made on these reductions. In fact, a PBO report that tracked the Liberals various spending reviews flagged the difficulty tracking the “overall plans, progress, and results” because there is no central document publicly available…

“There’s a coming squeeze here…and something has to give,” said Khan. A Liberal or a Conservative government in the future is “going to face the same stark choice. Before you cut programs that people want or need, the outsized growth of the public service has to be on the table. The unions will face this no matter who’s in power. It’s not going to go away.”

Source: Public service job cuts loom as Ottawa misses spending and deficit targets

Filed under Government Tagged with , , ,

Layoffs on the table for permanent government employees as part of spending review

2024/11/11 Leave a comment

These will be mild compared to what is likely coming under a likely Conservative government:

The federal government has been looking for ways to tighten its budget and curb the size of the public service, which has swelled in recent years. While the Liberal government has said it would do so through attrition and hiring freezes, cutting the jobs of permanent government employees wasn’t on the table.

But Canada’s biggest public sector union, the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), says that no longer seems to be the case.

During a meeting on Thursday between Treasury Board officials and PSAC, the union said it was told the government will be  “widening the net” to reduce its spending, looking to cut term and casual employees and “opening the door for departments to slash permanent employees” through layoffs.

The union said the Liberal government has assigned budget reduction targets “in salary line items” to federal departments. But it has not released those targets, claiming they were protected under Cabinet privilege and would only be made public in June 2025.

“It’s just really disappointing that, once again, there’s this doublespeak from the federal government,” said PSAC’s national executive vice-president Alex Silas, who noted that the government said the meeting was not a consultation.

Silas said the idea of cutting casual and term positions “is bad enough,” but the idea of cutting permanent positions is “shameful.” He said there was a lack of detail in the government’s presentation about the potential cuts, but that departments and agencies were coming up with their own plans and were “encouraged” to consult with unions.

In April, the federal government announced it would seek to cut the size of the public service by 5,000 full-time positions primarily through natural attrition over the course of four years, as part of an effort to save $15.8 billion over five years and reallocate it elsewhere.

According to the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, the size of the public service in 2024 is 367,772—up from 300,450 in 2020….

Source: Layoffs on the table for permanent government employees as part of spending review

Filed under Government Tagged with , ,

Federal government planning sharp cut to low-wage stream of temporary foreign worker program, sources say

2024/08/16 Leave a comment

Highlighting the contrasting views between a business group and the more objective Mike Moffatt:

…Dan Kelly, president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, said temporary foreign worker programs have been around for decades and have frequently been tightened or loosened over the years based on evolving labour-market needs.

He said the government’s moves to ease access to the program in 2022 were entirely justified at the time.

“There’s absolutely no question that coming out of the pandemic, the labour market was broken. There were hundreds of thousands of vacant positions, particularly in lower-skilled occupational categories, that desperately needed filling,” he said.

Mr. Kelly said he understands that Ottawa is now under pressure to cap access to the low-wage stream, but also urged the government to find the right balance.

“The challenge for government is I think most of them know that the politically popular solution is at odds with the economically viable solution,” he said. “Yes, the labour market has cooled a bit in Canada, but if we take out the temporary foreign worker program, then you better not complain about the line at the local restaurant or the increase in menu prices.”

Mike Moffatt, an assistant professor of business, economics and public policy at Western University who has previously advised the Liberal cabinet, said the 2022 changes went too far. He said reducing the use of the temporary foreign worker program would be good for wages in Canada, would help students find work and would encourage businesses to innovate.

He said he questions why fast-food restaurants in college towns such as London, Ont., are using the program.

“We’ve got thousands of students, thousands of international students, and we can’t find somebody to work at a Dairy Queen next to a college? It just doesn’t seem reasonable to me,” he said. “I think we have lost the plot here.”

Source: Federal government planning sharp cut to low-wage stream of temporary foreign worker program, sources say

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , ,

Yakabuski: The Trudeau Liberals created a ‘population trap’ that is making us poorer

2024/01/18 Leave a comment

Further piling on but correct assessment regarding the political difficulties in changing/reversing course:

Reducing immigration numbers will not be easy. Businesses and postsecondary institutions will bellyache and the Liberals risk alienating some progressive and ethnic voters. Paradoxically, it could cause short-term economic pain by temporarily reducing domestic consumption.

But cutting immigration is no longer an option that Mr. Miller can just “consider.” It must be his top priority.

Source: The Trudeau Liberals created a ‘population trap’ that is making us poorer

And from the Globe Editorial:

Another mistake being made in Canada is the Liberals’ failure to address the immigration issue. The government’s refusal to take obvious steps to end even the worst abuses of the student visa program, for instance, risks harming Canadians’ support for immigration.

Canadians should take note of how ignoring immigration issues has worked out south of the border. Decades of incompetence by both Republican and Democratic administrations has led to the point where the two sides cannot reach a bipartisan solution. That impasse has opened American voters to the idea of a radical fix, and has allowed Mr. Trump to win support for his inhumane threat to put illegal immigrants in concentration camps.

Source: The U.S. may be on the brink, but no democracy can be taken for granted

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , ,

ICYMI: How the federal government centralized under the Tories

2016/01/06 Leave a comment

Potential reasons for the increased centralization:

Several months before then-prime minister Stephen Harper called the 2015 federal election, the size of the federal workforce dipped below 314,000 — practically the same level as during the earliest months of his nearly decade-long reign.

But there was nothing remotely stable about what happened in between, when federal departments and agencies swiftly added more than 65,000 workers, then just as quickly cut the positions that had been created.

The topsy-turvy environment did little for efficiency, morale or clear thinking. But one unexpected result was a pronounced centralization of government in the National Capital Region.

It was a surprise because the Conservatives are strongest in the regions and outside the urban core, and might have been expected to shift some government operations away from the capital.

Yet the percentage of federal government employees working in Ottawa-Gatineau jumped to 39.3 per cent of the total last May from 33 per cent in May 2006, according to data supplied by Statistics Canada. The numbers are unadjusted for seasonal influences, but they are compiled using three-month moving averages to smooth out fluctuations.

Since May, the centralizing trend has reversed somewhat, but this reflects the one-time impact of the Oct. 19 federal election — which featured a mini-hiring boom of election helpers, mostly outside the capital region. Even so, the number of federal government workers in Ottawa-Gatineau — 131,500 in November — was 38.4 per cent of the total.

The question is: Why did the concentration here rise? It’s unlikely top bureaucrats deliberately set out to achieve this result.

….This is in sharp contrast with the situation in the late 1990s, when the federal government last embarked on a major downsizing. At the peak of the tech boom, the percentage of the federal government workforce based in Ottawa-Gatineau slipped to just 30 per cent of the total, as many former government employees jumped to fast-growing firms in the private sector.

Another factor that might have supported the recent centralizing pattern has to do with the internal politics of federal departments. Employees close to the head office are likely better able to safeguard positions here — or to identify other positions in the capital that might soon come open.

Whatever the reasons for the move to the government core, it presents the new Liberal administration with an interesting choice. The government’s spending plans suggest more hiring is in store for federal workers. Liberal cabinet ministers might find it difficult to resist the urge to steer new hiring to where the economy is weakest.

I would not underestimate the internal politics or dynamics which tend to guard headquarters more than regions.

Source: How the federal government centralized under the Tories | Ottawa Citizen

Filed under Government Tagged with , ,

‘Death by a Thousand Cuts:’ Memo to PM questions across the board budget cuts

2014/11/27 Leave a comment

Reassuring to know that PCO is doing its job and bringing these studies to the PM’s attention.

Last line is priceless and applies to the Canadian context and Government approach:

In a Jan. 27 memorandum to the prime minister, obtained under the Access to Information Act, the Clerk of the Privy Council briefed Stephen Harper on how austerity measures were being assessed in Australia.

“The authors found that prolonged cuts of this nature result in a loss of workforce capability, public sector productivity and innovation, and trust and confidence in public sector institutions,” states the memo.

The memo details how public trust is undermined “as programs become less efficient and effective in the wake of across-the-board cuts, and as mistakes and oversights occur.”

The study recommends that a better way to trim costs is by using efficiency audits of departments and by engaging staff to find effective and efficient new ways of delivering programs and services.

As the memo summarizes the Australian study, “skills shortages are having a significant impact on government operations, resulting in higher costs for recruitment and training over time, the appointment of more expensive private sector contractors for information technology, and diminished procurement expertise.”

Large portions of the four-page memo are blacked out.

The Prime Minister’s Office says it receives many memos and would not comment on the views in the Australian study.

“I will say that our government is proud of the steps we have taken to trim the size of government bureaucracy and ensure that tax dollars are being spent on programs and services that benefit Canadians,” spokesman Jason MacDonald said in an email.

….The study, based on austerity measures taken by national and regional governments in Australia, notes that politicians habitually claim cuts will be efficient and painless.

“In practice, however, claims that administrative budgets can be cut without affecting services are likely to be made only by politicians who have evaded explicit and responsible government decision-making, or want to evade it, or who are prepared to re-define services in order to evade it.”

‘Death by a Thousand Cuts:’ Memo to PM questions across the board budget cuts (pay wall)

And, in perhaps a concrete illustration of this, the Auditor General’s report on the sad state of Library and Archives Canada:

The Ottawa-based institution is supposed to collect and preserve government documents, photos, films, artworks and other materials of historical value and make them available for public use.

“Overall, we found that Library and Archives Canada was not acquiring all the archival records it should from federal institutions,” the report says.

The acquisition of federal records is governed by directives issued to departments and agencies, but some are out of date because they do not account for the records of new programs or changes to existing ones.

Since 2009, Library and Archives Canada was able to update the directives for just 30 of 195 federal agencies, meaning it could not ensure it was acquiring all retired records of archival value. As a result many records were stuck in limbo, awaiting Library and Archives’ decision as to whether they should be saved or destroyed.

Some of the 98,000 boxes of records in the backlog have been there for several decades. The auditor found the backlog had grown over the years and there was no approved plan to eliminate it despite allocation of $600,000 this year to tackle part of the problem.

Researchers for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission told the auditors the uneven quality of archival finding aids meant missing descriptions of box contents, as well as inaccurate or incomplete listings.

Library and Archives says digital records will represent the “format of choice” by 2017. However, there was no overall corporate strategy for the preservation of digital data, the report says.

The institution spent $15.4 million developing a trusted digital repository for records, but due to a change in approach it was never used.

Auditor General: Archives sitting on mountain of unsorted documents

Filed under Government Tagged with , , , ,

Newer posts →