Feds announce two-year cap on international student visas

The feds are cracking down on international study permits following months of calls to do so because Rising rates over the past several years are putting a strain on housing markets the overall number of permit holders has tripled since 2015 take a look at this on your screen hitting about 900,000

Last year but many of those students are on multi-year permits so reducing numbers will take time in 20203 more than 59,000 permits were issued today the fed’s announced new study permits will be tapped at 364,000 in 2024 for a national overall reduction of about 35% but when you break it down Province by

Province in some provinces like Ontario that’ll mean a 50% cut I spoke with immigration Minister Mark Miller right here in Montreal following that announcement have a listen hi Minister good to see you in person thank you for having me I appreciate you making the time uh I

Wanted to talk to you first about the announcement that you made today and specifically exactly a week ago I was interviewing about the prospect of a cap and you said sometime in the first quarter to first half of the Year you’d be examining based on the province’s

Reaction if you needed to impose One 7 Days Later you’ve announced a substantial one what changed in the interim well first we’ve been doing some work on this for some time and I as soon as I became Minister there were talks around the last cabinet Retreat about

About putting a national cap in and I had said that this is like doing surgery with a hammer and then we needed to do some work internally to shore up the issues around fraud around verifying offer letters that go out and and really some very integral system of the federal

Role in in this part of the international student system which is uh which is split between us and the provinces and the province’s regulation of designated learning institutes um clearly we we wanted to send a message to provinces to say you have time to clean this up but it’s coming um so

We’ve been doing work throughout the fall to look at what a cap would be what it would be by province and look at fairness within the system uh it’s clear that there are a number of provinces that have had a disproportionate amount of students come into the country and

Bear a disproportionate amount of of of the responsibility to clean it up um so it’s been some work that’s been in progress and the question was whether we announced this early in the first quarter or or or later on so it’s you know um the work had been done and it

You know I think the time was appropriate to get this out in and around the cabinet Retreat um but very well could have been last week or it could have been you know a couple weeks from now I guess what I wonder is there something that the provinces could have

Done in the interim that would have prevented you from making this announcement because as you mentioned you also floated it in the summer waited until just before Christmas to make another set of announcements around fraud as you indicated and then just a month later came out with this like is

There something they could have done that would have not had you impose this cap well I think if we had seen a significant amount of movement for from a number of the provinces in question um we probably would have been able to to wait a bit uh but obviously given the

Numbers that we see increasing and the fact that there’s a lot of applications in the system it’s something that we needed to act on right now uh there is currently now a freeze on applications until provinces get their acts together and have an application support system

Where they will give us a letter for each application by March 31st uh so the clock’s ticking and in the meantime there will be some I think really robust discussions with provinces to make sure that they have a plan to attack fraud and attack the Integrity of the system

That’s been really compromised by not only the volume U but the quality and the types of Institutions that are supporting people coming to this country and we see stories anecdotal but uh it seems to affect the entirety of the system of students that don’t have proper housing uh are going to are going

To food banks in some situations and aren’t really taking the educational experience seriously there are fake Commerce degrees in in Bramton and Miss Saga and people are just using it as a back door entry into Canada that’s unfortunate and that is not what the Visa program was intended to in the

First place you mentioned though that the numbers since you floated the idea in the summer continued to go up and it’s in that vein I’m wondering thinking particularly about the impact on the rental market and access not only for those International students but other Canadians as well rents in the past 2

Years have gone up by a total of 22% or an average of $390 per month do you regret in hindsight not introducing a cap earlier even this summer when you recognize that the problem was as acute as it is you know it’s hard to look hindsight is is what it is it’s of

Precious little value when you’re in government and need to act uh I would think looking back if we had imposed the cap it might not have been as aggressive as it was today or even as well thought out clearly there was some work we needed to do federally to make

Sure that we were getting rid of some of the worst aspects of fraud making sure that people had enough money to come come to Canada we were verifying offer letters um we trusted designated learning institutions and the provinces that regulate them and clearly with the numbers getting out of control we needed

To act and put the responsibility in in in in in provincial hands where it lies and pardon the interruption and I’m not trying to um you know remove the provinces jurisdiction from any of this or their culpability or the line of questioning or accountability toward them but those numbers just didn’t come

About overnight they were substantially higher in the past 2 years 800,000 in 2022 as you have pointed out 900,000 in 2023 and over the time you’ve been in office they’ve tripled other than the year of the pandemic when there was a blip so I understand your point around

Hindsight but when we’re trying to make sure that our government is as informed as possible in the policies policies it pursues in the future I think it’s normal for Canadians to wonder why is this something that you’ve just decided over night now is a big deal is it

Because there’s a housing issue and there’s political pressure on your government well first I’d say a couple things we’ve been having International students in this country for the balance of 40 years without having a cap uh so saying this is a relatively recent event uh is actually true the the I’m not into

Excuses excuses are only helpful in order to make sure that this doesn’t happen again um but clearly there was there’s been an increase since we opened up the Taps after shutting them off completely during covid with a lot of Institutions crying out on the financial

Impacts that this has had on them um it is no secret to anyone that have been underfunding the postsecondary institution sector massively for years uh and institutions have been smart and reacted accordingly so that’s that’s something we are composing with and composing with means we have to take the

Right policy proceed we have to make right policy choices in the context now International students aren’t responsible for the increase in uh the increase of housing prices alone or really the affordability crisis that has abs and in in sectoral in uh inas in Ontario for example or NC where it has

Gotten out of control you do have an impact on the rental market or people converting their own houses into um in into rental units and that does jack up the price now this announcement alone was not a housing announcement it will not solve the housing crisis that we are

Currently in uh but volume is volume the reduction of the volume will have an impact in sign ific markets where we’ve seen this run out of control let me ask you more broadly speaking as the minister who oversees immigration if you believe that the immigration policy your

Government is pursuing is in line with the absorptive capacity of the economy right now I think we have to be careful when we talk about what absorba of capacity is it’s often been a catchphrase for uh I see a problem here there and there uh and I’m going to associate it with

Immigrants I’m not casting aspersions on any anyone that uses the term because I use it myself uh but it’s something that is rarely measured uh we have seen impacts of immigration on on housing we’ve seen the impact of immigration on Healthcare uh and we’ve seen the impact

On the education system but we often fail to look at the other side of the equation which is which is the labor shortage that immigration has solved we are an aging population uh the the deputy chief of the Bank of Canada Tony grll has said that this government has

Done an exceptional job in making the population younger uh the demographic chart in Canada keeps me up at night but compared to other similarly situated governments we have done a remarkable job in making it younger so I think it’s something that is important uh immigration is one of the measures that

We need to use and persist in using to make sure that we keep having a ratio of people that are working to those that are retiring in order to be able to pay for all the services that we expect to and are is a badge of our identity as

Canadian so it’s a conundrum and and I don’t and I don’t deny it and I I don’t want to underplay the severity of the housing crisis but I think it’s something we can do in in a strategic mature way without getting into sort of um partisan politics and and

Stigmatizing I mean certainly the Genesis of my question is in no way meant to do that I think actually the reason I’m asking is for the converse because the as we public opinion polling has showed only very recently has Canadians attitudes towards immigration started to shift a little bit because of

Their perception that it is impacting their ability to afford a home or to afford their rent there are a number of economists at Big Chief Economist at the big Banks who very recently has said Canada has caught in a population trap they have acknowledged exactly what you said that immigrants have been an

Integral part of building our labor force making the homes that that we’re now upset that we can’t afford but at the same time they say that the absorptive capacity is not there Stefan Marion with the National Bank says you’ve got to cut immigrant immigration to 400 to 500,000 people a year based on

What the number of housing starts in this country right now based on the level of Health Healthcare the education system is it your assessment that he is wrong do you believe the levels that you have right now both on the temporary and permanent SIDS are able to be absorbed

By the economy well you don’t have to look at me to to see the counternarrative the Royal Bank of Canada and deard have offered counternarratives on this um economists deal with volumes and I think we have to respect those analyses as politicians particularly in Immigration space we

Deal with human beings and I think uh the analyses on the demographic curves are are quite clear if we don’t address this now as a country we will face huge problems in the next 10 years linking this to housing is an important discussion and I think we can do this in

A in a mature reasoned way if you look at other countries that do not have the housing crisis that we do um they also have issues with with immigration it there are winds that are blowing against the Canadian consensus the the the polling and the sophisticated analyses that we are seeing don’t necessarily

Show AR rise in xenophobia it exists we need to acknowledge that but what they’re showing is federal governments provincial governments territorial governments Municipal governments need to get their acts together when it comes to immigration in planning better whether that’s housing whether that’s Healthcare whether that’s targeted immigration level I guess that in the

Long term but that housing hasn’t been done so far at the provincial level at the federal level at the municipal level it doesn’t exist at the moment I’m not asking about our sort of ideological stance on immigration in the long term I’m asking in the short term do your

Immigration targets line up with what the economy can bear I believe so I mean we simply have to look at at the labor shortages that exist that we need to plug in a relatively expedient fashion in order to uh address uh issues that could be much worse if you look at a

Looming recession uh bringing down levels could have unintended consequences that Canadians would be uh much worse off for immigration has been one of the sole drivers of the labor force increases in this country of of our gross domestic product again it comes with a conundrum and some challenges but I think it’s something

That we are as a country up to in in facing as a challenge clearly Canadians have said at at the Canadian level with respect to immigration Canada ircc we need to work on processing times better have more tailored opportunities for people to come in and targeted for the

Demand that exists in the country as opposed to entertaining hope and giving people points for their their their accreditations or their skill set and then just sort of dumping them here and letting them figure it out for themselves when it comes to provinces we give three-year immigration levels that

Get hotly debated but those levels give a prediction for three years provinces don’t necessarily react accordingly to those numbers that are come out and invest in housing and invest in healthare so tying those together is important because uh again we’re one country and we need to be able to face

This in a mature reason unfortunately running out of time I just have one final question from the federal perspective and again I’m not trying to take the hook off the provinces for their line of accountability here do I infer from what you said or interpret from what you said that you are not

Entertaining reducing Target levels for any other stream of either permanent or temporary immigration beyond what you’ve done today I would say I would say quite clearly we are not looking at a reduction at the permanent levels we are looking at levels that always reflect the needs of the country and and and and

And what the economy is is telling us to do as well as what Canadians are telling us to do um it’s no secret that we are in a war with Ukraine is in a war with Russia right now and we are still have outstanding visas that Canadians wouldn’t forgive us for welcoming

Ukrainians that are fleeing War that’s just the reality that we may have to ose with if we see an increase of people that are here temporarily including those fleeing War okay Minister I’ll leave it there I appreciate your time this evening thank you thank you f

Immigration minister Marc Miller discusses the new restrictions on international student visas.

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