Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Dec. 2nd, 2024

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Okay.

Thank you for those answers.

Mr. Jacob, do you support the cap?

[Jean Daniel Jacob]

I do.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Do you support making the cap permanent?

[Jean Daniel Jacob]

I would follow some of the other people who intervened already. I would if we are able to ensure that we meet the needs of the different schools and, in my case, the health care industry.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Was your organization consulted before these immigration changes were made?

[Jean Daniel Jacob]

Not that I know of. I have just been appointed.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

I know. If you can get back to the committee on whether anybody else in your organization was consulted, that would be very helpful for us to know.

Would you support, then, keeping the cap on the master's and Ph.D. students? You mentioned that it's important for nursing.

[Jean Daniel Jacob]

We would, as long as it meets the needs. We would have to see the inner workings of how that would happen.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Okay. I'll take that as a conditional yes. I understand.

Mr. Côté, you said that you support the cap with some nuance, and you provided the nuance. You used the word “crisis” quite a bit. When did the crisis start?

[André Côté]

I think this has been a slow-simmering thing that's been building, really, for a decade, I would say. Then, obviously, we saw things just be turbocharged coming out of the pandemic to the point where something had to be done.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

What do you mean by “something had to be done”? Do you mean to stop the abuse in the system or the very high numbers of international students entering the country, being driven by demand; or do you mean for something to stop it, as in that the government wasn't doing enough?

[André Côté]

Sure, there was some talk of the bad actors and the abuse of the system, but I think it's mostly the numbers. The growth is just so dramatic, and I think the sense was that we needed to pull the emergency brake.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Are you saying that the crisis started in about 2020 to 2022, when the government started making decisions to make it easier for persons to enter Canada on our international study permit?

[André Côté]

I mean, put it this way. When I was working in the Ontario government, we made a decision back around 2017 to wind down the public-private college partnership program, and the subsequent government kind of wound it back up, but even then we knew there were some problems in the system. I think things go that far back, maybe farther.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Do you know if your organization was consulted before the immigration changes were announced?

[André Côté]

We were not consulted.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

You were not consulted.

Do you support making the cap permanent?

[André Côté]

I do, yes.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Would you support the cap being made permanent on master's and Ph.D. students as well?

[André Côté]

I would need to understand better how it's applied, but the key point would be that the federal government should be very clear in providing their allocations to the provinces and largely defer to provinces in terms of how they want to make the allocations available, both to their institutions and for the field of study or the types of programs—

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Côté, I'm going to interrupt you.

You talked about the trust for prospective international students. What about the trust of Canadians?

You have seen a very fast drop in support amongst Canadian citizens of permanent residents for immigration. The immigration consensus has been destroyed in Canada. How should the government keep the trust of Canadians so that they are actually running immigration levels and an immigration system for their benefit, instead of for the benefit of those who are, frankly, outside of Canada at the moment?

[André Côté]

I think efforts now need to be made to rebuild that trust, frankly. It's heartening that there is some resilience in public sentiment, but I think you're right that it has fallen.

This is part of a broader package of reforms to get things back on track, but I think this will be a longer-term thing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you very much.

We will now go to Madam Zahid for six minutes.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thanks to all three witnesses for appearing before the committee.

First, my questions will be for Mr. Côté.

Mr. Côté, I would like to focus on your September article in OUSA's “Educated Solutions”. It's an interesting article.

You point out that international student enrolment in Ontario has grown by 342% in less than a decade. Ontario accounts for nearly 75% of the international college student enrolment. Do you think this growth is sustainable?

[André Côté]

First off, I want to thank you for reading the article. I wasn't sure whether anyone had.

Do I think that growth is sustainable? No, absolutely not.

I think the situation looked different in different parts of the country. It was most concentrated in the Ontario college sector and reflected in that growth. I think that was a major contributor to needing to pull the emergency brake here.