Evidence of meeting #115 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was students.
A video is available from Parliament.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sukh Dhaliwal
Now we will go to MP Kwan. She will be the last honourable member before we switch to the next panel.
MP Kwan, you have two and a half minutes.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
Thank you very much, Mr Chair.
I want to get back to these letters that have been issued to tell people there's a deadline with their interim status. Will the officials be issuing a public statement to let people know that this is an error—it's an old template that has been used, where the processing time used to be more expeditious—so that they're now not caught out in this situation thinking that their implied status would actually be expiring towards the end of the year?
How will the officials fix this problem? I'm aware that when some people went to apply for jobs, and they could only tell the employer that their implied status would last for only a couple of years, they were declined an offer for the position. The damage is already done.
Director General, Family and Social Immigration Branch, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
I will take that back to the department to see exactly how we're going to proceed.
As a first step, we are amending that letter—
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
Sorry. I get it. You're amending it going forward. But the letters already went out. The damage is already there. What will the officials do to fix that problem for people? That's the question.
With regard to the letters that Mr. Kmiec has put on the record, I met with the Hong Kong young professional association folks during the break week. Literally scores of people came to tell me about the problems they are faced with. This is as a result of the government's failure to properly process their applications and to expeditiously process their PR applications. This interim measure has created further problems for them.
This has to be fixed. It has to be fixed expeditiously. Then there's a question about what work needs to be done and what action will be taken by the officials retroactively for the people who have already been negatively impacted as a result of this error.
Director General, Family and Social Immigration Branch, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
I would say that we'll take this back to the department and come back to you on our approach going forward.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
Mr. Chair, I would request officially that there be a formal response to the committee from the officials on this problem that we have identified, and that they outline exactly the timeline and what the steps will look like to rectify this problem.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sukh Dhaliwal
Thank you, MP Kwan. The time is up.
On behalf of the committee members, I want to thank the panel members for being here and sharing the information.
I wish you the very best.
With that, I will suspend to set up the next panel.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sukh Dhaliwal
Welcome back.
Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on October 24, 2024, the committee is resuming its study of the recent reforms of the international student program.
I would now like to welcome our witnesses for the second panel.
We have Professor Herb Emery, who is online.
We also have Professor Christopher Worswick in person.
We also have, from the Université du Québec, Mr. Maxime Colleret.
Up to five minutes will be given to each of the speakers.
Who wants to go first?
There are no hands up, so I will give Mr. Emery the floor to speak first.
Please go ahead for five minutes.
Professor Herb Emery Vaughan Chair in Regional Economics, University of New Brunswick, As an Individual
Thank you. I was hoping that Professor Worswick would go first.
I'm Herb Emery. I hold the Vaughan chair in regional economics at the University of New Brunswick. My research is focused on policy options for growing the regional economy and understanding labour market adjustment in a subnational context. I benefited from working with the UNB-based New Brunswick Institute for Research, Data and Training, led by Dr. Ted McDonald, which allows for access to de-identified, linked administrative data, which provides new perspectives on subjects like immigrant retention in the region and post-secondary graduate outcomes in New Brunswick.
Recent changes to the cap in numbers of international students and to raise financial barriers for international students seeking to attend Canadian post-secondary education institutions, which include limits on work hours off-campus, will have important impacts for our PSE institutions, post-secondary education institutions, in the Atlantic region. They may have important impacts on regional labour supply, population growth and productivity growth but, given the economics of our labour markets in this subnational setting, I expect the main impacts of the region will be for the post-secondary education institutions and their finances, and a large number of small employers relying on labour-intensive production and service provision.
Since 2016, when I moved to the Atlantic region, I've encountered five major reasons that stakeholders and governments provide for growing numbers of international students enrolled in colleges and universities in the region.
The first one is a population growth goal. The four provinces that make up the Atlantic region all face challenges of population aging and out-migration of their own residents. Immigration was identified as an effective way to backfill for interprovincial out-migration and eventually grow the size of the region's population. International students were just one more provincially targeted entry program to increase immigrant numbers in the region.
Second, with the population aging and a declining demographic of the usual ages that attend post-secondary education, it was seen that international students would provide revenue for post-secondary education and also boost enrolment numbers, which was going to be a problem when you have stagnant provincial grants to the institutions along with caps on increases in fees for domestic students. Immigration was going to solve a revenue problem for post-secondary education institutions.
Third, the goal was to create a pool of labour for low-wage jobs for students who need to work while they are pursuing their studies. This was coming on the heels of the region losing its traditional glut of low-skilled, low-wage labour, which had been a source of competitive advantage in many of its industries, like manufacturing. With that glut gone, it was ideal to find a source of labour that would take jobs that a lot of Canadians, particularly younger ones, weren't keen to take. That was the second avenue, and it's what led to some of the lobbying for very long work hours for full-time students.
Fourth, economic growth and innovation objectives were to be met by international students graduating from programs in the region and being retained, who would become entrepreneurs, innovators and skilled workers to raise regional productivity.
Last, it was also identified that, with the out-migration of highly qualified personnel, having regionally educated international students could backfill in strategic sectors, like IT and ICT, to keep some kind of strategic advantage for the regions seeking to grow some of these new industries.
It should be immediately apparent that higher numbers of international students in the region were to address a number of diverse goals and challenges—population growth, growth of university and college resources—provide a pool of low-cost labour and, over the long run, increase productivity in the region. The goals may have differed across interests and stakeholders in the region, but the interest in higher numbers of students did not. Consequently, support for higher numbers of international students has generally been high, and it was seen as having a number of diverse benefits for the near term and over the long term for the region.
Research that I and colleagues at NB-IRDT have carried out suggest that the main impacts of all this increase in international students would have been for post-secondary education finances and for providing a transitory supply of low-cost labour for the region's employers. There hasn't been an increase in retention rates of immigrants over the long run in the region. There isn't a large supply of transitions of students into permanent residency in the region. It is higher when they have work permits, but it's still, I would say, a minority share of the total immigration increase that has been coming in.
In evaluating the impacts of the recent steps, more discussion needs to be focused on what goals are trying to be achieved with the international student program and how the powers and responsibilities of the provinces and their post-secondary education institutions, which are are recruiting the students, align with those interests for meeting the stated program goals versus meeting their own needs and goals that they're setting on their own.
I think a big problem for the region has been this misalignment of the agency of the institutions and recruiting with what was trying to be achieved with some of the larger goals of that program related to growth of the region in terms of its economy and population.
It's also important to recognize that high numbers of immigrants and international students are not the only ways to address labour supply concerns in the region or university finances. It may have been an expedient solution in the short run, as it's been very difficult to deal with some of these other longer-term challenges with the labour market, like EI reform and what is a sustainable size of a post-secondary education sector. As a consequence, we've now run into the problem where the region has gone out on a limb, relying on international students to solve a number of different problems. That's now going to potentially be capped—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sukh Dhaliwal
Professor Emery, you are at six minutes and 13 seconds. Please wrap up.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sukh Dhaliwal
Thank you very much.
We will go to Mr. Maxime Colleret for five minutes.
Please go ahead.
Maxime Colleret Government Relations Specialist, Université du Québec
Thank you for giving me the floor.
Mr. Chair, vice‑chairs and members of the committee, my name is Maxime Colleret. I handle government relations at the Université du Québec.
Thank you for having me here today to talk about international students, more specifically about the federal government introducing a cap. I think it's important to hear the Université du Québec's point of view on this, particularly because of its mission to make university studies accessible in French and its province-wide presence, as it operates 10 establishments in over 40 municipalities across Quebec.
To give you an idea of its influence, the Université du Québec accepts 100,000 students, and one in two of them is the first in their family to go to university.
The Université du Québec was created in 1968 by an act of the Government of Quebec. Since then, it has awarded 850,000 degrees. Today, nearly 7,500 professors and course instructors work at the Université du Québec. There are also 5,000 doctoral students, and 30,000 scientific articles have been written over the past five years, 52% of them in international collaboration. This shows not only the Université du Québec's reach, but also the importance of international collaborations and the role of international students here at home. We'll come back to that later.
Once all this data is put together, the Université du Québec, whose network includes 10 establishments, becomes the largest university in North America. In terms of size, with 100,000 students, it's even bigger than the University of Toronto.
Of our 100,000 students, 18% are international students. Over the past 10 years, that number has increased, but in a controlled manner. We went from 11% to 18% international students, so that's seven percentage points.
Over the past year or so, the federal government has announced a number of measures to reduce or monitor international students in Canada. In 2024, a cap of 485,000 study permits was established. At the time, it was understood that the objective was to crack down on abuse, particularly by certain individuals who have turned immigration into a business model.
It was also understood that Quebec exercised its immigration jurisdiction, particularly by issuing acceptance certificates to international students. I would remind you that in the announcement, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration cited Quebec as an example to follow.
As a result, the cap the federal government established for Quebec exceeded the number of students enrolled in establishments. However, we were witnessing the application of a Canada-wide measure to solve a problem that seemed specific and intended to make those engaged in fraudulent practices stop doing so, which does not concern the Université du Québec or the other Quebec universities.
After that first measure, we learned recently that the federal government wanted to lower the cap for 2025. According to the announcement, the cap of 485,000 study permits in 2024 will indeed be reduced by 10% in 2025.
Apart from that reduction, we also learned that master's and doctoral degrees would now be included in the cap. Even though we don't yet know the cap that will be set per province, the Université du Québec is concerned about this new measure.
Including graduate degrees in the cap seems to me to be a particularly worrisome avenue. At the Université du Québec, for example, over 50% of our international students are enrolled in graduate studies. In practical terms, this means that a significant number of students who were excluded from the cap last year will now be included.
We understand that the purpose of this measure is once again to counter the practices of certain individuals outside Quebec who have started offering master's programs to get around the previous cap that excluded graduate degrees, for example. However, I would like to remind you that master's and doctoral degrees are regulated in Quebec by the Ministère de l'Enseignement supérieur, which oversees universities and CEGEPs. It seems to me that this is a general measure and it doesn't address the realities of Université du Québec establishments and Quebec establishments in general.
I also want to say that Université du Québec establishments have assumed their responsibility to ensure that they welcome students and facilitate their integration as well as they can. We've put in place a host of measures, which we can discuss later.
I also want to remind you that Quebec university establishments, as well as international students and the communities that benefit from their presence, may be penalized as a result of this Canada-wide measure.
However, if there have been abuses and some individuals aren't following the rules, action does need to be taken.
That said, it has to be done in a targeted way, not by introducing measures that apply to everyone, even those playing by the rules.
Thank you for your attention.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sukh Dhaliwal
Thank you very much, Mr. Colleret. That's perfect timing—five minutes and five seconds.
Now we will go to Professor Worswick for five minutes.
Professor Christopher Worswick Professor and Chair, Department of Economics, Carleton University, As an Individual
I just want to say that I'm not getting the translation. I just thought I'd bring that up now.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sukh Dhaliwal
Mr. Worswick, can you hear the translation now?
He's not hearing anything.
The mic might be an issue. We're going to change the mic, so we'll pause until we get this fixed.
It's working, so I'm going to call the meeting back to order.
We're going to give the floor to Mr. Worswick for five minutes.
Prof. Christopher Worswick
Thank you for giving me this opportunity. I thought I would make some high-level comments on international students and immigration programs, which is sort of my area of research.
As I'm sure everyone knows, international students can represent a large win for a country like Canada, with a very high-quality post-secondary education sector and a high standard of living. The tuition gained by universities and colleges can be significant, allowing them to put on high-quality programs that benefit both international students and domestic students. Things like the rental income that international students pay to Canadian landlords can also be significant, an important part of the Canadian economy.
Where I think the situation becomes more complicated is if we have a two-step immigration system where temporary residence as a temporary foreign worker, or international student in this case, leads to preferred access to admission under the permanent immigration system. I think this type of two-step system is appealing in that we often learn a great deal about particular international students through their performance and their studies in Canada. That's all good. It also helps avoid problems of foreign credential recognition for immigrants to Canada, which have been significant for many years.
Let me quickly say what I think are the risks of this type of program with international students in particular. First, a large international student population can create pressure to greatly expand the immigration system beyond what is likely optimal. In my research with colleagues on this, we find that one would want immigrants arriving under the economic categories to be raising the average skill level of all residents in Canada. I think it's reasonable to expect that if a person is doing a university degree, that will be the case. Their earnings after they enter the labour market and get established will be higher than the average. It's raising the average skill level. It becomes less clear at the public college level that this would be true, and especially at the private college level.
My suggestion would be to prioritize international student visas such that they only go to programs where the graduates have expected labour market earnings after graduation that are likely to be above average in Canada, at least within a reasonable time frame of, say, five to 10 years or something like that.
I think this would not be difficult to do, as we have a lot of data in Canada and analysis on earnings of graduates from Canadian programs and universities. To my mind, this is feasible to do. This criterion for the allocation of international student visas would likely eliminate all private colleges in Canada. Whether it would eliminate public community colleges might depend on the academic program, but I think this should be ultimately an empirical question for any academic program, whether it be university or college. One could address it in a scientific way, using available data rather than having universities and colleges lobby government for these visas.
As I see it, the other problem with a large international student program, as we've seen in Canada in recent years, relates to what traditionally has been called absorptive capacity. The idea here is that there's concern that a large number of new immigrants arriving in the country each year could be so high that this distorts wages, prices or access to key government services. We should be cautious in setting targets or limits on the number of international students, given that we do not want the number to be so high as to lead to large-scale rental increases or reductions in access to such services as public health care. I believe the expansion of the non-permanent resident population in Canada from roughly 786,000, or 2.18% of the population, in 2016 to over three million, or 7.27% of the population, in 2024 was likely to far surpass what the Canadian economy was able to absorb. The limits that the federal government has put in place on the different international migration programs, but in particular the international student programs, I think are justified, if perhaps happening much later than they should have.
Finally, the reports that an increasing number of international students facing the end of their visas may be lodging false refugee claims are very concerning. This would be very costly for the Canadian economy and greatly limit our capacity to control the size of the population. One way to minimize this risk is to use the earnings criterion that we grant student visas only in cases where the person's earnings are likely to be so high, or high enough, after graduation that they would qualify for admission as a permanent resident under the economic category. If this were the case, it is unclear why a person would ever file a false refugee claim.
In summary, the recent reforms to the international student program represent a good first step in terms of regaining control of a program that has been growing at an alarming rate.
Recognizing that international students typically wish to gain permanent residency after graduation means that we can have a successful international student program that benefits Canadians. To do this, we need to focus the allocation of student visas to students entering academic programs that are likely to make them both highly successful in the Canadian labour market and eligible for admission as economic permanent residents to Canada.
Thank you again. I would be happy to answer any questions.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sukh Dhaliwal
Thank you very much, Professor Worswick. It was five minutes and 30 seconds, good timing.
Now we are going to honourable members.
I'm going to start with Mr. Kmiec.
Bloc
Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe Bloc Lac-Saint-Jean, QC
Mr. Chair, I have a point of order.
Given the time, are we going to have two turns?
How much time do we have in total? That wasn't mentioned.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sukh Dhaliwal
I will go until 5:45 or 5:48 at the latest.
Okay?
Thank you.
With that, Mr. Kmiec, I'll start the watch now.
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
Thank you, Chair.
Professor Emery, at the first meeting this committee had, we heard from officials. They mostly said they didn't know anything, but they did mention in their opening statement that the cap and other policy measures that were introduced were because of “unsustainable growth”—that's the quote from them—and to reduce student vulnerability. In your opening statement, you talked about the goals the government may have had.
What do you think the government's goals were in putting on the cap? Do you think those are the right ones, or do you have different goals that should be reached?