@charlesadler: Affordable housing — or else

2023/09/01 Leave a comment

Another voice jointing the chorus:

“I think we need to do some serious thinking here.” — Housing Minister Sean Fraser discussing the idea of putting a cap on the number of foreign students in Canada, Aug. 21 in Charlottetown, P.E.I.

Let’s begin with a fact of life that most Canadians are unaware of — about 800,000 foreign students are now living in Canada.

The minister for housing revealed the number. The key reason is university economics.

Tuition for foreign students is substantially higher than it is for Canadian citizens. And universities are always looking for money.

There is no easier place to find it than young people around the world seeking a university education in Canada.

Most of these students are not living in university campus housing. There isn’t nearly enough of that housing stock available. So they compete for mostly rental housing with millions of Canadian citizens.

Eight hundred thousand is the kind of number that is forcing the housing minister and his government to do some “serious thinking” about limiting the number of foreign students Canada admits every year. There is no doubt the government is also revisiting its immigration targets.

The government plans to bring in an estimated 500,000 immigrants every year. But if we continue to have a dearth of housing in this country, we have to take seriously the idea of bringing in fewer people.

It’s axiomatic that politics cannot change the math.

But the math can and does change politics.

The most credible information on housing statistics comes from the federal Crown corporation known as the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC). CMHC figures say the country will need to build nearly six million new housing units in Canada in the next seven years to accommodate our population growth. One out of three will be rentals.

There is a multitude of reasons we may not hit those targets.

Ironically, one of those reasons might be any decision to slow down immigration. Canada’s construction trades rely heavily on immigrant workers.

The sad truth is many countries do a good job of encouraging their citizens to take up various trades. Canada is not one of them. But if we continue to have more newcomers than places where we can house them, we will continue to have a housing crisis in this country.

In some cities, rents are becoming outrageously expensive. As is always the case in conversations about the price of shelter in Winnipeg, we have it good relative to places like Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal, the three cities that have been largely responsible for electing the last three Liberal governments. But relatively good is not the same as actually good.

While the housing picture is murky, especially in Canada’s largest population centres, the politics could not be clearer.

Justin Trudeau’s government will be evicted by the voters two years from now unless steps are taken to reduce the growth in the price of homes and rent.

There is no point in pretending that housing is a one-size-fits-all issue.

We need different kinds of new housing for different people. For low-income people, we must build new government or co-op housing at affordable prices. The same goes for seniors who rely exclusively on their pension income to be involved in the housing market. The government has the means to create its own market for people without means, whether they are old or young.

The same goes for student housing. It’s no mystery where the students are. They’re on campus. And so apartment units have to be built close to campuses and rented out at rates that are lower than the free market in buildings that aren’t competing for the free market.

They’re owned by government agencies created for the needs of students, working-class families and low-income seniors.

Can the government do this in Canada? Of course they can. There is nothing I am suggesting that governments calling themselves liberal democracies or social democracies aren’t doing in many parts of the world.

After the Second World War, it made sense for the federal government to build housing across Canada for veterans returning home to young families. We’re in a cost of living war right now.

And for the government of the day, on this day and this year and next year and the year after that, it’s a political war for hearts and minds that it cannot afford to lose. The next election hinges on it.

More importantly, a less stressful quality of life for millions of Canadians, requires it.

Charles Adler is a longtime political commenter and podcaster.

Source: Affordable housing — or else

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Beaudry: Au-delà des chiffres sur le français et les étudiants étrangers

2023/08/31 Leave a comment

Useful reminder that Quebec francisation policies are harder for PhD students:

Les étudiants étrangers font la manchette : on leur attribue divers maux de notre société, du déclin du français à la crise du logement. Mais plutôt qu’alimenter la guerre de chiffres que se livre différentes factions en matière d’immigration, ce texte relatera plutôt une belle histoire de volonté et de résilience.

En matière de francisation, la réalité des études supérieures contraste avec celle des études de premier cycle. À l’instar de plusieurs universités en Europe et ailleurs, la pression pour donner les cours et faire la recherche en anglais est très forte.

Bien que ce ne soit pas la mission de nos universités de franciser les étudiants allophones, rendre plus flexibles nos programmes d’études supérieures pour leur permettre de suivre de vrais cours de francisation est nécessaire, puisqu’avantageux pour tous. Mais cela prend du temps et de l’argent. Faire son doctorat et suivre des cours de francisation en même temps relève du parcours du combattant.

À Polytechnique, comme dans beaucoup d’autres institutions, le doctorat à temps partiel n’existe pas : il faut franchir à vive allure toutes les étapes dans les temps impartis. Si nous voulons contribuer à l’intégration des personnes étudiantes que nous accueillons et formons, nous devons repenser ces premières années des programmes d’études supérieures.

Ce temps supplémentaire exerce aussi une pression énorme sur les fonds de recherche des universitaires qui appuient ces personnes pendant une plus longue période d’études.

À Polytechnique, j’enseigne en français. Un de mes étudiants de doctorat dont le français se résumait à « bonjour » s’inquiétait de ne pas pouvoir suivre les cours et bien comprendre la matière. Pour les cours du trimestre d’hiver 2022, nous nous sommes donc tournés vers la technologie pour pallier son manque de compréhension du français. Il a installé une application sur son téléphone cellulaire qui traduit de façon simultanée la langue parlée. Une des oreillettes était placée sur mon bureau (elle servait alors de micro) et il avait l’autre dans l’oreille (où étaient diffusées mes paroles traduites en anglais). Le texte traduit en anglais défilait aussi sur son téléphone, avec un petit délai différent de celui de la voix en anglais. Ce n’était pas parfait, mais il estime que 60 % de la traduction était compréhensible et correcte. En plus de cet équipement mal synchronisé, il a traduit en anglais tous les documents et présentations de ses cours du trimestre.

À l’été 2022, je lui ai demandé pourquoi il n’était jamais disponible avant 14 h. J’ai déjà eu des étudiants lève-tard et des oiseaux de nuit, mais si tard, je trouvais cela curieux. Il m’a avoué candidement et un peu honteux que depuis novembre 2021, il était inscrit à temps plein aux cours de francisation pour les personnes immigrantes et qu’il devait être en classe de 8 h à 13 h, et ce, tous les jours de la semaine.

Me voyant bouche bée, il m’a expliqué que, pour comprendre la réalité des personnes immigrantes au Québec, de façon à bien cerner cette dimension de son sujet de recherche, il devait se mettre dans leurs souliers. Il faut dire que sa thèse porte sur le rôle de l’immigration qualifiée et des étudiants étrangers sur la collaboration internationale en science, technologie et innovation.

Depuis le début de ma carrière de professeure, certains de mes étudiants ont bien suivi quelques cours de français ici et là au cours de leurs études — avec des résultats très mitigés, pour être honnête. Mais personne ne s’était encore prêté à cet exercice intense en plus de ses études doctorales.

Nous avons dû planifier l’examen doctoral et la présentation de sa proposition de thèse, qu’il a réussi avec brio, entre deux modules de cours de francisation. Avec la permission de son école de francisation, il faisait une pause pour reprendre lors du prochain module (dont la durée est d’environ huit semaines). Au moment où j’écris ces lignes, il ne lui reste que deux modules de cours de francisation à terminer, mais toute mon équipe de recherche l’encourage, converse avec lui en français et est fière de ses progrès.

S’astreindre chaque jour à cinq heures de cours de français, en plus des devoirs à faire le soir, des présentations orales à préparer, sans compter les cours de la scolarité doctorale, les travaux et les articles à lire en préparation de la proposition de thèse, représente une tâche titanesque.

Serez-vous surpris d’apprendre que cet étudiant a non seulement réussi avec succès son examen doctoral et présenté sa proposition de thèse, mais qu’il a aussi remporté l’une des prestigieuses bourses Vanier que le Canada offre à des étudiants exceptionnels et déterminés ? Félicitations, Amirali !

Plutôt qu’être un handicap pour les universités francophones, ce début un peu plus lent des études doctorales devrait être considéré comme un avantage qui rend nos diplômés plus attrayants dans un milieu très compétitif. Autant nos étudiants et futurs diplômés, leur famille, leur société d’accueil et les universités francophones en bénéficient.

Donnons-nous les moyens de remplir cette mission sociétale correctement.

Source: Au-delà des chiffres sur le français et les étudiants étrangers

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Keller: How to fix a broken foreign student visa system? Send it back to school 

2023/08/30 Leave a comment

Yet more commentary from Keller, this time on international students. Valid criticisms but hard to see how any government, federal or provincial, would have the political courage to implement even if they should take significant steps in that direction, starting with caps and gradually eliminating the “visa mills” of the private colleges and the public institutions that work with them:

Marc Miller, the new federal immigration minister, gets it. Whether he plans to fix it; whether the Prime Minister’s Office is interested in fixing it; and whether the provinces will help all remain to be seen.

The “it” is Canada’s student visa program. Its defects and side effects have been getting a lot of attention, mostly in relation to housing prices. The fact that more than 800,000 visa students were in Canada last year, compared to fewer than 200,000 a decade and a half ago, is one of many contributors to a growing mismatch between housing demand and supply. It’s not discriminatory to point this out. It’s just math.

But in an interview last Saturday with CBC Radio’s The House, Mr. Miller said there are issues at stake that are bigger than housing. He’s right.

He described the international student recruitment system as an “ecosystem” that is “very lucrative” but has brought “some perverse effects: some fraud in the system, some people taking advantage of what is seen as a backdoor entry into Canada.”

He said that the larger issue is “the integrity of the system.”

Bingo. Canadians want an immigration system that benefits and enriches Canada. It’s become obvious that part of the student visa program, maybe even most of it, is no longer hitting the target or even aiming at it.

As I said in my last column, the Trudeau government broke the immigration system by enabling a massive shadow immigration stream of temporary foreign workers, many now coming through student visas. And Ottawa had help: from private industry lobbying for an all-you-can-eat buffet of minimum-wage labour; from educational institutions with dollar signs in their eyes; and from provincial governments that saw an opportunity to put their higher education budgets on a diet, with foreign student tuition making up the difference.

The leader on that last account has been Ontario. Between 2000 and 2022, its number of foreign students rose from 46,000 to 412,000. The rise under the Doug Ford government has been especially vertiginous, and particularly pronounced in the college sector. In 2016, fewer than 35,000 new student visas were issued to attend Ontario colleges. Last year, the number was more than 143,000.

A lot of those students are at suburban strip-mall academies or office park “campuses.” Some are run by private entrepreneurs. Others are the product of entrepreneurial arrangements between public colleges and private operators, with the former providing the credentials and latter just about everything else.

What is being sold in many cases is not world-class education, but the right to come to Canada, to work while enrolled, to continue working after graduation and to move up the line for citizenship.

And at around $15,000 a year for an Ontario college credential, that’s selling Canadian citizenship at fire sale prices.

The road to citizenship via higher education – genuine education, of a genuinely higher level – is a path our immigration system should always be eager to promote.

When a foreign graduate in, for example, engineering, is given a student visa to do a master’s degree at, say, the University of Alberta, and after their studies they choose to remain in Canada, this country wins.

Our student visa system is supposed to be a pipeline of people who are more educated and skilled than the average Canadian, making them likely to be more economically productive than the average Canadian.

The student visa system is not supposed to be a route to come here to flip burgers, stock shelves or deliver Instacart.

Canada should be maximizing the number of high-skill, high-wage immigrants, and minimizing the number of low-skill, low-wage immigrants. A sensibly run student visa system would be entirely about the former. Instead, a big chunk of it is now about the latter.

How to fix that?

The first thing Ottawa should do is cap the number of student visas. Mr. Miller said this year’s tally will be around 900,000. He should cap future intake well below that.

Next, create a system to prioritize who gets the limited supply of visas. Some in higher education have suggested that can’t be done, but every university and college has a system to do something similar, year after year. It’s called the admissions department. If there are only 500 places in the medical school, the school has to figure out who are the best 500 to admit.

A spokesman for Mr. Miller told me that the department is having “exploratory discussions” about creating a “trusted institutions” framework, which would look more favourably on educational institutions meeting a “higher standard” in areas such as “international student supports and outcomes.”

To govern is to choose. The highest quality and highest value programs should get the visas.

Some provinces will scream, notably Ontario. It underfunds public colleges relative to other provinces, by leaning heavily on foreign student tuition. But at Ontario colleges, foreign students are paying surprisingly low tuition fees. The price is generally far below university tuition. It can rise.

Ottawa should also end the right to work in Canada while in school. Or at least restrict it to high-wage work. Make it so that a Canadian education is the reason a foreign student is coming to Canada, not the pretext.

Source: How to fix a broken foreign student visa system? Send it back to school

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Chinese students frustrated by lengthy security checks as school year nears

2023/08/30 Leave a comment

Of note:

Some Chinese international students say their study permits have been tied up in security screenings, leaving them in the lurch for months after being admitted to Canadian universities.

Yunze Lu, a master’s student in electrical and computer engineering at the University of Ottawa, has already completed a year of coursework online and successfully applied to the school’s co-op program.

“I have a very simple and clear background. It’s OK to be checked, but I don’t think it needs to be checked for so long,” he said.

“It makes me feel they are doing nothing but just don’t care about my application, just throw it away.”

Lu said he didn’t even know his application was under security review by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) until he filed an access to information request to the CBSA to find out more about his file.

Through social media, he has now connected with other frustrated study permit applicants, some of whom spoke to CBC News.

‘This is unfair to all of us’

Xinli Guo has also been waiting months for the study permit that will allow him to take up an offer from the U of O’s master’s program in systems engineering.

“This is unfair to all of us,” he said.

Through proactively tracking his file, Guo helped resolve an issue with a financial document and learned that he’d been placed under security review in May.

“I don’t think I deserve a security check because I don’t have anything related with Canadians’ national security. I’m just a normal student going to study engineering courses in Canada,” he said.

Given the delay, Guo is worried he’ll lose his admission offer and could miss the opportunity to apply to study in other countries.

In a statement, the University of Ottawa said it’s aware of students from “many countries” facing visa issues and is working to develop contingencies.

The university says it continues to advocate for a fair, efficient and transparent immigration system that allows students to plan their future with confidence.

In a statement, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) said China is one of the top sources for international students and the department is receiving a record number of applications.

Since January 2021, there have been nearly 181,000 study permit applications from China. Of those, 1,832 have not been processed.

“All study permit applications from around the world are assessed equally and against the same criteria, regardless of the country of origin,” IRCC said.

“Security screening is one, but not the only, factor that can result in higher processing times.”

The department said processing times vary on a case-by-case basis depending on complexity, responses for additional information and the ease of verifying the application’s content.

According to the department’s website, a study permit should take about seven weeks.

Delays ‘problematic,’ immigration lawyer says

Will Tao, an immigration lawyer at Vancouver’s Heron Law Offices, said the worsening geopolitical situation between China and Canada may be combining with the increasing use of algorithms to contribute to a rise in certain files being caught in review delays.

“Grad students working in the computer science/tech space, and especially folks with government experience or with parents that are in the government, those are the ones that are being flagged in our experience,” he said.

“It’s very, very problematic how this has become almost a predictive analytics exercise.”

Tao said applicants from Iran, another country with fraught geopolitical relations, have faced similar screening delays. He said while he understands there is a national security need for screening, and international diplomacy complicates the issue, students are being left uncertain about their futures due to the lack of transparency.

“They could be pursuing other stuff or going to other countries,” Tao said.

More Chinese visa applicants are resorting to using mandamus applications in court to compel a government decision, he said. The applications are used to compel IRCC to issue decisions in a timely fashion after considerable delays.

Chinese applicants account for 12 per cent of mandamus applications, second only to India and just ahead of Iran, according to Tao’s analysis of IRCC data.

Source: Chinese students frustrated by lengthy security checks as school year nears

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Integrity of immigration system at risk as international student numbers balloon, minister says

2023/08/28 Leave a comment

Smart communications to link to integrity issues but test will be what he and the government does about it. Too late for the upcoming academic year and the education associations are already protesting:

Immigration Minister Marc Miller says the concern around the skyrocketing number of international students entering Canada is not just about housing, but Canadians’ confidence in the “integrity” of the immigration system itself.

Canada is on track to welcome around 900,000 international students this year, Miller said in an interview that aired Saturday on CBC’s The House. That’s more than at any point in Canada’s history and roughly triple the number of students who entered the country a decade ago.

That rapidly increasing number of international students gained increased attention this week when the country’s new housing minister, Sean Fraser, floated the idea of a possible cap on the number of students Canada brings in.

Fraser framed a cap on international students as “one of the options that we ought to consider” during a cabinet retreat earlier this week in Prince Edward Island.

Miller, who took over from Fraser at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, told guest host Evan Dyer that the rising number of students was a concern for housing, though he says it is important not to overstate that challenge.

“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,” he said.

But Miller shied away from committing to the idea of a hard cap on the number of students entering Canada.

“Just putting a hard cap, which got a lot of public play over the last few days, is not the only solution to this,” he said.

“Core to this is actually trying to figure out what the problem is we’re trying to solve for. It isn’t entirely housing, it’s more appropriately the integrity of the system that has mushroomed, ballooned in the past couple of years.”

Miller said there were a number of “illegitimate actors” who were trying to exploit the system, which was eventually having a negative effect on people trying to come to Canada for legitimate reasons. Miller referred to one high-profile instance last month of an international student found sleeping under a bridge.

He said he would not get involved with “naming and shaming,” but said his focus was on some private colleges. Work would need to be done to tighten up the system, he said, to make sure institutions actually had space and suitable housing for people who are being admitted. Miller also said closer collaboration with provinces was key to solving the problem.

Cap opposed by major universities

In a statement to The House, the National Association of Career Colleges said “regulated career colleges provide efficient, high-quality, industry-driven training for domestic and international students to produce the skilled workers Canada most desperately needs.” That includes workers in the construction trades that build housing, they said.

Philip Landon, interim president and CEO at Universities Canada, also pushed back on the idea of a cap, seeking to position major universities as part of the solution to the problem.

“I think we can say that the housing situation is a crisis for Canadians broadly,” Landon said in a separate interview with The House. “I do not think that the blaming newcomers or international students … is the right way to go.”
With Canada facing an acute shortage of affordable housing, the federal government is considering putting a limit on the number of international students it allows in each year.

Speaking to The House, a number of international students in Ottawa pushed back on the idea that people like them are making housing unaffordable. In fact, said Rishi Patel, a student from Zambia, international students often have a more difficult time finding housing than domestic students as they often lack credentials.

“I just came to Canada. I don’t have any credit checks yet. I don’t have any employment references,” he said.

Mike Moffatt, an assistant professor at the Ivey Business School who specializes in housing policy, agreed with that sentiment when he spoke in P.E.I. earlier in the week.

“This is a systemic failure, I would say, of both the federal and provincial government and as well that the higher education sector in which I work to ensure that there’s enough housing for both domestic and international students.”

“Domestic and international students are the biggest victims of this, not the cause of it,” he said.

Housing has become a top political issue federally, with the Tory opposition hammering the government as Canadians struggle with the cost of living.

“We as Conservatives will make sure that international students have homes, health care and when they want it, jobs so that we can get back to a system that supports our universities, attracts the world’s brightest people, helps the demographics of our country but does not leave people living in squalor,” Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said.

Talking with Dyer, Miller said the focus of his department was on ensuring the system was working properly for those trying to come to Canada.

“What we don’t want to see is hopes dashed based on a false promise,” Miller said.

Source: Integrity of immigration system at risk as international student numbers balloon, minister says

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How to fix Canada’s international student system? These experts have a plan

2023/08/26 Leave a comment

Another proposal to address the excessive growth of international students:

Amid a raging debate over how to manage Canada’s international student sector, some say the federal government should adopt a different kind of system for granting visas to foreign students — one that could reset expectations and help weed out “bad actors.”

And such a system, advocates say, has already been proposed.

For years, critics have been calling for reforms to this country’s fast-growing international education program. Thousands of international students are lured to Canada each year, many by the prospect of gaining permanent residence as a result of getting a Canadian education and ensuing work permit.

This week, facing public pressure over the housing crisis, the federal government mused about reining in the surging number of students who have filled the classrooms of post-secondary institutions from coast to coast.

“It’s critical to signalling first that there is a real problem,” Toronto immigration lawyer and policy analyst Mario Bellissimo told the Star.

Though caps have never been placed on visas for foreign students, workers or visitors before, advocates point out the idea of restricting how many people can apply for entry into the country is not a new concept. Many permanent residence programs already have annual quotas, such as for the sponsorship of parents and grandparents.

“The mechanism of how they’re going to do this is as important as establishing a cap. If it’s not set out in a way that’s sustainable, we’re meeting back here in a year or two.”

What Bellissimo and others say they believe would help is a two-staged system similar to the existing economic immigrant selection process to both cap and manage the international student intake.

Earlier this year, Bellissimo led an effort with other lawyers and MPs to submit a proposal to reform the international student program to then immigration minister Sean Fraser, who is now in charge of the housing portfolio.

The proposed Expression of Interest Study Permit Program is modelled on the current economic immigration application management system. That system requires interested applicants to enter into a pool and be invited to submit an application based on their scores in a points-ranking system.

Points would be allocated based upon factors such as the applicant’s education history, previous degrees, grades, language ability, financial sufficiency and educational institution to which they were admitted.

The pool would be divided into streams between those accepted by colleges and universities, as well as those who are pursuing a study permit for “in-demand” occupations in Canada or who have no interest in remaining in the country after graduation. There could also be the option for provinces and municipalities to support the applications destined for their regions.

Once all the study permit spots are filled, the remaining candidates in the pool would wait for the next round of invitations in the following school term. Their applications would be disposed of after a year and they would have to reapply to be considered again to avoid a backlog.

“Capping is not necessarily a bad thing, because if you allow everyone to apply, inevitably many are going to be turned away or are not processed at all,” said Bellissimo. “So you’re actually squeezing the door shut as opposed to opening it.”

The approach would reset applicants’ expectations of their ability to come to Canada either temporarily or permanently, and redirect them to other programs if one were close. For international students, it could mean picking other countries if it was too competitive to get admitted to Canada.

Bellissimo says he was told the proposal was being considered.

Education is a provincial jurisdiction and post-secondary education institutions are currently charged with admissions of international students. The Immigration Department can control the intake by wielding its power in issuing study permits or inviting eligible applicants to apply without overstepping on the provincial jurisdiction.

“Managed intake is probably a first priority versus cap. The idea of a management system is you don’t necessarily have to refuse 50 per cent of applicants. You can somewhat control the number of applicants that are actually competitive to apply for study permits,” said Vancouver immigration lawyer Wei William Tao, who was part of the effort with Bellissimo.

“Now … schools throw off letters of acceptance kind of blindly to as many people they can, knowing that a large proportion will never make it here, but (are) still eager to.”

By limiting the number of spots schools could feed in the pool, said Tao, it would encourage their administrations to be more “prudent” in handing out letters of acceptance to candidates.

But the idea to cap the intake has already upset the post-secondary educational sector that has increasingly counted on international students as a source of revenue amid declining domestic enrolments and provincial cuts to education.

Employer groups that rely on international students to fill job vacancies have also raised concerns over the proposed cap.

The Quebec government has already publicly rejected the idea.

“This has developed into a huge industry. So people are upset if there’s a cap, then some colleges or some universities are going to miss out on income,” said Toronto immigration lawyer Zeynab Ziaie.

“It’s a very short-sighted way of looking at this, because if we’re just having them go through programs or colleges that are just for show and just to give them permission to remain here, is it really helping Canada?”

Ziaie said both Canada and shady recruiters have marketed the international student program as a pathway for immigration. However, there has been a huge gap between the number of students who are being admitted and who end up qualifying as permanent residents.

She said immigration officials have the power to impose stricter and more cumbersome requirements on student visa applicants such as higher language test scores and the minimum $10,000 bank balance, which has remained unchanged for years.

“It might limit who can come in and study in Canada, but at the same time, it might be more fair if you were someone who is likely not going to ever be able to apply for permanent residency,” said Ziaie.

“You shouldn’t really have to come and incur all of these costs and then not have a pathway to permanent residency later.”

Source: How to fix Canada’s international student system? These experts have a plan

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Randall Denley: Time for Ford to act on Ontario’s reliance on international students for post-secondary funding

2023/08/26 Leave a comment

Good and needed reminder that the provinces and their education institutions are largely responsible for the rapid increase in international students, with the federal government largely automatically facilitating visas:

A light bulb has finally come on in Justin Trudeau’s cabinet. Dim thought that bulb may be, it has sufficient power to illuminate a glaring weakness in how Ontario funds post-secondary education.

Sean Fraser, the new federal housing minister, offered the opinion this week that the 807,260 international students in Canada are putting pressure on the Canadian housing market. That’s not terribly surprising, since the number of international students has more than doubled since the Liberals took power. It’s also a problem that Fraser failed to address when he was immigration minister.

While it’s gratifying to see the federal Liberals tentatively identifying a link between the number of people flowing into the country and the shortage of housing, it’s Ontario Premier Doug Ford who really has to wake up.

Ford talks non-stop about the housing crisis and is willing to do anything to build more housing, but his own government’s policies have made the problem worse. Its failure to properly fund post-secondary is the root cause of the burgeoning international student population in Ontario, where about half the national total resides.

This is a problem Ford inherited, then made worse. Under the previous Liberal government tuition fees rose steadily as universities scrambled to cover costs not met by provincial funding. When first elected, Ford cut tuition fees by 10 per cent and his government has frozen them ever since.

That was great for students, not so great for universities and colleges. To make up the public funding shortfall, universities and colleges turned increasingly to international students, who pay much higher fees than Canadians, up to four times as much.

In effect, the Ford government and the universities and colleges reached a tacit agreement. The post-secondary institutions would stop fussing about underfunding in exchange for the government supporting an unlimited flow of international students.

Ontario Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk has highlighted the overreliance on international student fees in two reports. In December 2021, Lysyk found that Ontario’s colleges received 68 per cent of their tuition fees from international students. That’s what happens when a Canadian student pays $3,228 and an international student $14,306 for the same education. In 2022, she determined that international students, about 14 per cent of the student body, were paying 45 per cent of university tuition fees.

Some differential for international students is justified, but only enough to make up what the province covers for homegrown students. Ontario’s fees are exorbitant.

In effect, Ontario has turned its post-secondary sector into an international training business. As a result, the sector has expanded in its search for revenue, flooding the province with students who require housing.

Despite the obvious pressure this creates on housing, the Ontario government has been enthusiastic about the burgeoning Ontario student population. Not only do the international students subsidize the education of students from Ontario, they provide a source of cheap labour while they study here. Even better, the government hopes that many of them will stay in Ontario after they graduate.

Ford is caught between conflicting problems. There is a labour shortage and immigration seems like an obvious way to solve it, but a larger population increases demand for housing and health care beyond the province’s capacity to provide it. Ford has struggled to connect those two dots, championing population growth while pretending the province can handle it.

Whatever the perceived benefits, Ontario’s heavy reliance on international students’ tuition dollars to support its colleges and universities is unwise, a point made compellingly in an analysis by the Canadian Federation of Students.

It is also a problem that will be expensive to fix. The Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations says that provincial funding covers only 33 per cent of university costs. Bringing Ontario per-student funding up to the average of the rest of Canada would cost $12.9 billion over five years, the professors estimate. For context, Ontario’s base program spending for the entire post-secondary sector this year is $12.1 billion.

Ontario has taken one small step toward rationality. Earlier this year, it appointed a “blue-ribbon panel” of academic and business leaders to provide the government with advice on making the post-secondary sector financially stable. Raising government support and cutting reliance on international students would be two obvious recommendations. The panel is expected to report within the next four weeks.

The Ontario government is certainly not going to stop the flow of international students, nor should it. What it needs to do is reduce the system’s reliance on those students’ fees by reducing their numbers and making up the difference itself. That would help both the housing market and the stability of post-secondary education.

Randall Denley is an Ottawa journalist, author and former Ontario PC candidate. Contact him at randalldenley1@gmail.com

Source: Randall Denley: Time for Ford to act on Ontario’s reliance on international students for post-secondary funding

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Globe editorial: How the Liberals can roll back the surge in student visas (and blame Stephen Harper)

2023/08/25 Leave a comment

Likely one of the simpler solutions but will provoke considerable opposition given the number of education institutions that have largely become “visa mills.”

Another lesson from the Harper years is with respect to Temporary Foreign Workers; when abuse and displacement of Canadian workers became apparent, the government reversed course and largely reimposed the restrictions it had imposed.

One bit of political folk wisdom of Chretien (forget the context and the exact wording) was “when you paint yourself into a corner, you need to step on the paint.” Time for the government to do so with credible changes:

Timid as it is, the federal Liberals’ mulling of a cap on the (already astronomical) number of international student visas met with instant opposition from Quebec and postsecondary institutions.

Source: How the Liberals can roll back the surge in student visas (and blame Stephen Harper)

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Yakabuski: Capping foreign student visas isn’t as simple as it sounds

2023/08/25 Leave a comment

Good reminder that making choices harder that talking about “considering” limits. And, as always, interest groups, whether provincial governments, education institutions and associations, have louder voices that people affected by housing availability:

Housing Minister Sean Fraser’s suggestion that Ottawa may consider limitingthe “explosive growth” in foreign student visas, which many experts say has contributed to Canada’s housing affordability crisis, is giving indigestion to college and university administrators.

…

Source: Capping foreign student visas isn’t as simple as it sounds

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Quebec rejects cap on student visas floated by Ottawa to address housing crisis 

2023/08/24 Leave a comment

Expect other provinces will join the chorus given all rely on international students to fund post-secondary education. Education organizations already also chiming in:

The Quebec government says it won’t accept a cap on the number of international students it can admit, rejecting one of the options the federal government is considering as part of a plan to tackle a national housing crisis.

Universities and colleges, meanwhile, said they were surprised and troubled, respectively, by the suggestion, which was first raised by Housing and Infrastructure Minister Sean Fraser at a Liberal cabinet retreat in Charlottetown on Monday.

Quebec’s reaction indicates that attempts to limit international student admissions could create conflict with the provinces. They have jurisdiction in areas of education and their postsecondary institutions have come to rely on lucrative international tuition fees.

“Quebec does not intend to impose a cap on the number of foreign students in its jurisdiction. Although issuing study permits is the responsibility of the federal government, education is the exclusive power of Quebec. It’s up to Quebec and its educational institutions to determine the number of people they can accommodate,” said Alexandre Lahaie, a spokesperson for Quebec Immigration Minister Christine Fréchette.

Federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller confirmed his government is strongly considering a cap on the number of international students Canada accepts. But Mr. Miller stressed that such a measure alone won’t fix the housing crunch.

“This will be a multipronged approach. A cap is something we’ll definitely entertain,” Mr. Miller said on Tuesday.

The number of international students in Canada soared past 800,000 in 2022, more than twice as many as when Justin Trudeau’s government took office in 2015. Some experts have said the influx of students in need of lower-cost rental accommodation has contributed to rising rents in some cities, at a time when construction of new housing has been inadequate.

More than half of all international study permits issued in 2022 went to students at Canadian colleges, a sector that has surpassed universities as the top destination for international students.

In a statement, Colleges and Institutes Canada, which represents publicly funded colleges, said it is “troubled” by the suggestion of a cap on international enrolment.

“Although implementing a cap on international students may seem to provide temporary relief, it could have lasting adverse effects on our communities, including exacerbating current labour shortages. Furthermore, we want to emphasize that students are not to blame for Canada’s housing crisis; they are among those most impacted,” Colleges and Institutes Canada said in a statement.

Michael Sangster, president of the National Association of Career Colleges, which represents private colleges, said his members are willing to work with a cap, if that’s what the federal government decides, or with a trusted institution model, another proposal the federal government has floated that could see institutions with a good track record receive preference in permit processing.

“The students that are coming to our institutions, many of them are training to become tradespeople to build the homes we need. So we’re in a bit of a catch-22 right now, but we want to be part of the solution,” Mr. Sangster said.

Philip Landon, interim president of Universities Canada, an umbrella group representing nearly 100 institutions, said the idea of a cap on international university students is concerning and something universities don’t believe is necessary.

“Universities seek to attract talented students to Canada and have been doing so in a responsible way with responsible growth rates,” he said.

Mr. Landon called on the federal government to make low-cost financing available to universities to allow them to build more residence spaces.

Mr. Miller said the government is already in talks with postsecondary schools about what they can do to guarantee more housing availability. He said provinces also need to be at the table, as they’ve benefited greatly from the international student program.

He said it has become “very lucrative” for some schools, adding that the economic impact of international students in Canada is more than $20-billion a year. While he said much of that is good, there is also “some abuse in the system.”

The international student program is a temporary resident immigration stream that isn’t subject to the yearly caps or targets that Ottawa sets for permanent resident immigration streams.

Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc said Tuesday that the premiers have not raised the need for a cap on foreign students with him. He added that while they talk often about the need for more housing, the premiers have also made clear they need more immigrants to fill labour shortages, including in the construction industry.

Mike Moffatt, the founding director of the PLACE Centre at the Smart Prosperity Institute and one of the authors of a new report on housing supply, spoke to the federal cabinet behind closed doors on Tuesday.

He said the increase in foreign students has had knock-on effects in the housing market that have helped turn a rental crisis into a home-ownership crisis.

In the area around Fanshawe College in London, Ont., for example, neighbourhoods once occupied by young families have “turned into a sea of student rentals” bought up by investors, he said.

“Domestic and international students are the biggest victims of this, not the cause of it,” he said.

“This is a systemic failure, I would say of both the federal and provincial governments and as well the higher education sector.”

Source: Quebec rejects cap on student visas floated by Ottawa to address housing crisis

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