Could these steps help fix Canada’s international student system? Senators think so

2023/09/21 Leave a comment

Sound assessment of some of the weaknesses and lack of integrity in international student recruitment and the complicity of education institutions and provincial governments.

Generally sensible recommendations but given jurisdictional issues, I favour some variant of provincial caps that oblige the provinces to tighten up approval of DLIs to address some of the worst abuse.

Ideally, of course, higher education would have adequate funding but defining “adequate” should not be equated with the status quo nor should it be assumed that provincial governments would simply pick up any shortfalls due to reduced international students:

Canadian governments must better police the educational sector and develop a national policy to manage foreign student intake to maintain the integrity of the country’s international education program, says a new study.

In a report released on Wednesday, four independent senators recommended stricter criteria for the so-called designated learning institutions (DLIs) to host international students and steeper penalties to hold them accountable to “unscrupulous behaviour and negligence” of their recruitment agents.

“Canada’s international student program benefits significantly from the presence of agents since they are the drivers of an industry that contributes tens of billions to the economy each year,” said the report prepared by Senators Sabi Marwah, Ratna Omidvar, Yuen Pau Woo and Hassan Yussuff.

“Agents and DLIs are not necessarily acting with the best interests in mind of international students themselves. There is little incentive and no oversight by Canadian governments to ensure both agents and DLIs place international students at DLIs most suitable for each student’s educational, career and immigration objectives.”

The integrity of Canada’s international student program has increasingly come under public scrutiny after hundreds of students from India were found to have come here with allegedly fraudulent college admission letters earlier this year.

Amid the country’s worsening housing crisis, the exponential growth of the international student population — inching toward 900,000 this year — has prompted the federal government to consider reining in their intake by strengthening its program integrity.

According to the Senate report, some 51 per cent of international students settle in Ontario, followed by B.C. (20 per cent), Quebec (12 per cent), Alberta and the Atlantic Provinces (both at 5 per cent) and Manitoba and Saskatchewan (both at 3 per cent).

While Canada has benefitted financially and culturally from international students — $22 billion in tuition revenues and spending to the economy a year, the report said there have been costs associated with the growth of the enrolment.

Canadian colleges and universities have continued to count on international tuition fees as a revenue source as government investments in education declined. Since 2006, said the report, the gap in tuition between international and domestic students has risen from double to five times as of last year.

“DLIs are responsible for setting admissions criteria for international students, but their desire to recruit as many as possible often results in low admissions standards,” said the 26-page report.

“DLIs then discover certain international students are not academically proficient enough to keep up with their programs in Canada.”

The recruitment frenzy has been fuelled by education agents, who typically receive from the schools a commission that ranges between 15 and 20 per cent of the admitted international student’s first year of tuition. The report said it works out to average commissions of $1,500 to $7,500 per student.

Adding to the mix are unscrupulous private colleges and ghost agents who prey on the ignorance of international students with “empty promises” about career prospects in Canada upon graduation and who lie about eligibility for work permits and permanent residence.

“The International Student Program has been a victim of its own success. International students have a strong desire to come to Canada, however they face many challenges including high tuition fees and abuse. In many cases they do not receive the support they need to overcome these difficulties,” said Sen. Omidvar.

“They are also being blamed for the many current economic and social challenges facing Canada, but they are the victims and not the perpetrators. We need to change the program to ensure it works for Canada and the students that contribute so much to our country.”

The Senate report said the top priority to address the integrity of the program is to conduct a national review to ensure the Canadian post-secondary sector is financially sustainable because funding shortfall is what has led to the aggressive recruitment of international students.

It also recommended a higher bar for schools to qualify to admit international students by requiring them to submit detailed plans on how they assist students in securing housing, asserting legal rights, finding employment — similar to what they had to comply during the pandemic as a condition to welcome international students back on campuses.

“DLIs who do not live up to standard should be subject to losing their ability to welcome additional international students,” said the report.

Given the “outsized role” education agents play in the industry, it recommended that immigration officials must regulate these recruiters and impose stronger penalties, such as fines and the revocation of DLI status against schools who benefit from unscrupulous agents.

The report said Canada should follow Australia’s step in requiring educational institutions to upload agent information into a centralized portal, including which agents they have written contracts with, and study visa outcomes by their agents including whether applications were approved, refused, withdrawn, or deemed invalid.

While many of the international students are lured by the prospects of permanent residence, just 30 per cent of them managed to become permanent residents within 10 years of arrivals due to the limited spots available annually.

The report said Canada must develop a national strategy to align the number of international students admitted with its annual permanent resident targets based on the needs of provinces, educational institutions and employers.

Source: Could these steps help fix Canada’s international student system? Senators think so

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Feminist Senators are critical actors in women’s representation

2019/11/13 Leave a comment

Interesting take. Would also benefit from possible impact of visible minority and Indigenous senators:

The results of the federal election have produced much scrutiny over the number of women in Canadian Parliament. The Senate is nearing gender parity, with 60 percent of Prime Minister Trudeau’s appointments being women. Gender and politics scholarship has shown that meaningful representation of women’s interests is likely to occur not just because of a critical mass of women, but because of the presence of critical actors. It seems that a group of independent feminist senators have the potential to be critical actors in the representation of Canadian women’s policy interests. Their efforts will be ones to watch in the next Parliament.

The new Parliament will start in the coming weeks, and politicians will descend on Parliament Hill ready to get to work. They certainly haven’t forgotten the near-constitutional crisis at the end of the last Parliament. The Liberal government pushed many pieces of legislation through the House of Commons only to have them stall in the Senate. While some bills were passed, a few significant pieces of legislation died on the Senate’s Order Paper. Amidst the intensity of the last legislative session, a cadre of feminist independent senators worked hard to ensure that the interests of Canadian women were represented. When Parliament starts up again, these senators will surely continue to work together to pursue feminist initiatives in policy-making.

For decades, the Senate has had a better balance of men and women than the House of Commons has. However, we have no studies that show whether the presence of women senators has led to the effective representation of Canadian women’s policy interests.

In recent years, research on women’s representation has shifted focus. Rather than looking just at the number of women in Parliament, researchers are looking at the critical actors who represent women’s interests. We know that increasing the number of women in a legislature is likely to improve the representation of women’s policy interests. However, researchers have found the most important factor is that there are actually people in Parliament who are willing to stand up for women. The group of feminist Canadian senators could be those critical actors.

The new Senate appointment process allows individuals to nominate others or apply directly, and it emphasizes proficiency over partisanship. As a result, many feminists with specific expertise have been appointed as independent senators with free rein to form their own alliances.

Under the new appointment system, a number of Canadian feminist powerhouses have been introduced to Parliament. They bring with them a myriad of experience advocating for women’s interests. Donna Dasko helped found Equal Voice, which is a nonpartisan organization that supports women running for office in Canada. Kim Pate was formerly the director of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies, which advocates for women in the criminal justice system. Another senator who has fought for women’s rights is Marilou McPhedran, who was instrumental in getting section 15 equality rights into the CanadianCharter of Rights and Freedoms, and who helped to found the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund. Mary Coyle has also promoted the rights of women and Indigenous peoples, setting up the First Peoples Fund to provide microfinancing to First Nations and Métis communities in Canada. Before entering politics, Frances Lankin was an active member of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, where she acted as the provincial spokesperson for the Equal Pay Coalition. Rosemary Moodie comes from a career in maternal medicine, where she advocated for the expansion of quality health care to marginalized populations. The specific expertise that these senators bring to Parliament informs their work in the Senate.

There are also senators who have particular experience with advising governments on women’s issues. Wanda Thomas Bernard was the chair of the Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women. Nancy Hartling cochaired the New Brunswick Minister’s Working Group on Violence Against Women. Julie Miville-Dechêne was the chair of the Quebec government’s Conseil du statut de la femme. These formidable women represent a few of the feminist senators who, along with many other senators, are working hard to represent women’s interests in the chamber as well.

With this influx of wide-ranging expertise, there have been questions about whether ad hoc Senate caucuses will form on different issues, especially because Liberal senators were removed from the party’s national caucus. Former senator Hugh Segal has been a supporter of that change. With the removal of party discipline, he says, “you could have a caucus on women’s issues, you could have a caucus on defence, you could have a caucus on First Nations issues, you could have regional caucuses.” The efforts of feminist senators seem to be an example of that prediction at work.

In fact, Pate, McPhedran and Coyle allied with NDP MP Christine Moore to found the Canadian Association of Feminist Parliamentarians in late 2018. It already has more than 60 members, and it is working on getting parliamentary approval. The association demonstrates the drive for collaboration and support among Canadian feminist senators.

In an illustration of collaboration between feminist senators, Senator Dasko has worked with her colleagues on oversight of Bill C-78, an Act to Amend the Divorce Act, which she identifies as a bill with vast importance for women: “I took on the responsibility for delving into it. A responsibility on behalf of a small group of senators, feminists as we were, who wanted to make sure that we understood the bill and made changes where we felt necessary.” She recounts a time when the group strategized that she would take the lead. Another senator gave her seat on the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee to Senator Dasko as a replacement, to ensure that she could deliberate and vote on the Divorce Act at the committee stage (since she had studied the bill’s subject matter and its weaknesses). This access to expertise is an example of the benefits of a cooperative feminist group.

Senator Dasko says she finds that “with the ISG senators, there are a lot of women…it really is a quite congenial work environment. I think we try to get along and we get along very well. I think we work very collaboratively.”

Before the Senate reform, senators’ memberships in party caucuses meant that they did a lot of collaborating behind closed doors, in caucus meetings. We cannot know the specifics of what feminist alliances might have been formed there, or the effects that they had. Now, a group of openly feminist senators operates within the context of a more independent Senate. This provides evidence that some members of the Senate are working in the interests of Canadian women.

Source: Feminist Senators are critical actors in women’s representation

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Australian senator steps down because of dual Canadian citizenship

2017/07/19 Leave a comment

While a rule against dual citizenship for elected officials can be justified, this case highlights the absurdity of its formal application given that she left Canada when she was less than a year old and was caught by a Canadian rule change.

She does, of course, have the option of renouncing her Canadian citizenship but the process takes some time (don’t know how long but, if the example of Texas senator Ted Cruz is any indication, more than a few months).

Surprising, however, that she did not indicate her intent to renounce:

An Australian senator has been forced to step down because she is a dual citizen of Australia and Canada.

The Australian constitution disqualifies potential candidates from seeking election if they hold dual or plural citizenship.

Larissa Waters, who was also the deputy leader of the Green party, told a news conference Monday that was only found out about her status on Monday with “great shock and sadness.”

Waters was born to Australian parents in 1977 while they were studying and working in Winnipeg.

She left Canada as an 11-month-old baby and said she always believed she was just Australian.

Water said she also didn’t know she had to renounce the Canadian citizenship that was bestowed upon her at birth.

“I had not renounced since I was unaware that I was a dual citizen. Obviously this is something that I should have sought advice on when I first nominated for the Senate in 2007,” said Waters in a statement.

“I take full responsibility for this grave mistake and oversight. I am deeply sorry for the impact that it will have.”

Waters said she only discovered her status on Monday after seeking legal advice in the wake of fellow Green party member Scott Ludlam having to step down because he holds dual citizenship with New Zealand.

Waters said she was “devastated” to learn she was a Canadian citizen and has resigned from office “with a heavy heart.”

“I have lived my life thinking that as a baby I was naturalized to be Australian and only Australian, and my parents told me that I had until age 21 to actively seek Canadian citizenship,” said Waters.

“At 21, I chose not to seek dual citizenship, and I have never even visited Canada since leaving at 11 months old.”

Waters made international headlines earlier this year when she became the first woman to breastfeed her daughter, Alia, on the floor of the Australian Parliament.

Australian media reports say Waters was seen by some as a future leader of the Green party.

Source: Australian senator steps down because of dual Canadian citizenship – The Globe and Mail

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Almost 300 people nominated under new senate appointment process

2016/04/06 Leave a comment

Senate Appointments - with nominations.001Strong level of diversity among those nominated to fill Senate vacancies in Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec. But Quebec had a surprising low-level of nominations: only 39 compared to Manitoba’s 51 and Ontario’s 194:

Almost 300 Canadians were nominated to become the first senators appointed under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s new process aimed at turning the Senate into a less partisan, more independent chamber of sober second thought.

Trudeau named seven new senators last month, all chosen from a short list of 25 recommended by a newly created, arm’s length advisory board.

In its first report on the fledgling process, the board says it received 284 nominations from a host of groups representing a broad cross-section of Canada’s diverse population.

The nominees were 49 per cent female, 51 per cent male; 10 per cent identified themselves as indigenous, 16 per cent as visible minorities and four per cent as disabled.

The board’s first batch of recommendations were for vacancies in Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba.

Overall, 72 per cent of the nominees were anglophones but the vast majority of nominees for the open Quebec slots were francophone.

However, the report suggests interest in the new Senate appointment process was lowest in Quebec: just 39 nominations were to fill vacancies in that province, compared to 51 for Manitoba and 194 for Ontario.

Source: Almost 300 people nominated under new senate appointment process – Macleans.ca

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Kelly McParland: Trudeau’s first senate appointees are exactly the sort of people you’d expect Liberals to appoint

2016/03/24 Leave a comment

Valid points by McParland but one can have general values and experience ‘alignment’ while also having a measure of independence. And notably, he criticizes the general orientation of the appointees rather than taking issue with their individual qualifications.

But the degree with which they may or may not exercise their independence may be seen not just in their review of Government legislation but on the nature and tone of debates in the Senate and its committees:

Still, you’d think there would be at least a smidgen of curiosity about the latest appointees. They’re the first by the new prime minister, the first in three years (since former prime minister Harper gave up in disgust and quit appointing anyone at all), the first under the Liberals’ heralded new arm’s-length advisory council, the first to be appointed entirely as independents, and the opening wave in the Liberals’ proclaimed plan to de-partisan the benighted second chamber.

Surveying the names on the Liberal list of appointees, two thoughts spring to mind. 1. The Liberals appear to have concluded that the best way to escape the sort of Senate controversy that engulfed the Tories is to make the process as boring as humanly possible. 2. Having achieved that, they’ve used public ennui to appoint exactly the sort of people you’d expect Liberals to appoint.

To get the apathy ball rolling, Trudeau’s government announced in January it had appointed a three-member committee to advise it on potential appointees. It had three permanent members: a federal bureaucrat and two academics, plus “ad hoc” members from provinces with vacancies. The first ad hoc advisers included another bureaucrat, the head of a native women’s group, the head of a Quebec doctor’s organization, an athlete, a singer and the head of a charity.

It duly sent some names to Ottawa, from which Trudeau picked his chosen seven: the head of his transition team, a former Ontario NDP cabinet minister, an academic, an “expert on migration and diversity”, a Paralympic athlete, a federalist journalist from Quebec and the head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission into residential schools.

Since the Liberals claim all new senators have to be non-partisan, we’ll have to assume all these people assured the prime minister of their independence, though, looking at the list, it’s not hard to guess they skew pretty much to the left. Not a lot of closet Tories in that group. As my colleague John Robson put it, the list is so predictable of a Liberal government it might have been selected by an affirmative action random-elite-candidate-generator.

And what else would you expect? Examine the membership of the advisory committee and you notice it’s heavy with people paid from the public purse, or dependent on government for grace and favour. Who else would they put forward but Canadians who reflect their own background: public servants, academics, friendly faces, administrators, reliable interest groups and members of other Liberal-friendly operations. They don’t reflect Canada so much as they reflect the Liberals’ view of Canada: people like them; people you see in the salons of Ottawa, people who will be sympathetic to Liberal aspirations and the Liberal way of doing things. Even if, under Trudeau’s directive, they have to promise not to call themselves Liberals.

Source: Kelly McParland: Trudeau’s first senate appointees are exactly the sort of people you’d expect Liberals to appoint

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