Thank you, Chair, and thanks to the committee for inviting me to speak.
My name is André Côté. I'm the director of policy and research at the Dais, which is a think tank at Toronto Metropolitan University. In a past life, I was also a senior adviser to an Ontario higher education minister, so I sort of bring that perspective as well.
I'll say just a quick word about the Dais. We're based out of Toronto Metropolitan University. Our work really focuses on public policy at the intersection of education, technology and democracy. Those are kind of our three big realms. As part of that, we've been doing a bunch of work on international education, including a project we launched in the spring to think about the future of international education in Canada, really in the wake of the January announcement, which I think it's safe to say threw the system into crisis a little bit and was the result of the huge surge in international enrolments and whatnot.
This project was with the Canadian Standards Association Public Policy Centre and a few other partners. The aim to a large extent was research, but it was also hosting round tables with a wide array of other partners and stakeholders in this space. My remarks will be informed by a bunch of the work we've been doing there. The report is to be released soon as well.
I'll just hit a few quick points and then I'm happy to elaborate further in the questions.
The first one is that we need to really focus on what we have to do to fix Canada's international education system for the future, rather than assigning blame for the past. I think the great frustration and anger are very understandable. I've certainly heard from many stakeholders in the space about what's happened over the past year. As someone who's been in this space observing for 10 years or so, I think there is plenty of blame to go around and, frankly, some of this was foreseeable years back. Certainly, some of this is on the federal government, but also a large share is on the provinces and certain provinces in particular that jointly manage the system. A share is on the universities and colleges, many of which chose to pursue really aggressive growth strategies. Then there were many other players in the system who had a real vested interest in this surge in growth, so they contributed.
I just think the first point is that, rather than dwelling on that, we really need to focus our energies on fixing the system to benefit Canada and also, importantly, doing right by foreign students coming to Canada. That's point one.
Point two is that I and we are broadly supportive of the government's reforms. I'll have some caveats in a moment.
This year, because they've come in these various announcements over time from January through the spring to another in September, it's been tough to gather this sort of full picture. However, when you look at the key reform, it certainly was around the study permitting system. I think the reforms have shifted it from what was a somewhat laissez-faire, demand-driven model to a right-sized and capped supply system linked to the temporary residence targets in the levels plan. This makes sense to me. You can quibble about the numbers and the approach, but it broadly brings some structure and that sort of sustainability piece that's been talked about.
Again, you can quibble over the numbers, but I think that measures to tighten up postgraduate work permit eligibility, putting in place more system integrity and accountability mechanisms, the attestation letters, more levers for overseeing DLIs, the changes to the working-hours policy, which were way too high at the 40 hours, and increasing the cost of living asset requirements were, as a broad package, some things that needed to be done.
Third, I would say that my sense is that the federal reforms have overstepped into some domains that are better managed by the provinces and by the post-secondary institutions. I think the particular areas of concern are around the reforms to tie postgraduate work permit eligibility for colleges to in-demand programs and the changes around graduate students, including incorporating them in the cap and things that seem reasonably minor, like limiting work eligibility to spouses of grad students in shorter programs.
One aspect is that these reforms are really using immigration levers to, in some regard, dictate post-secondary policy, which I think is problematic. That should largely be left to the provinces.
They're also very blunt instruments for trying to do these things. Frankly, on the postgraduate work permit eligibility, for example, is IRCC best placed to be forecasting labour market needs across the country or identifying qualifying programs? Many stakeholders we talked to had concerns with this piece.
Going forward, our recommendation is that this should be done in conjunction with or, frankly, potentially deferred to the provinces in future. It's something we can dig into. We see them as being much better equipped to understand local labour markets and regional development needs and to oversee post-secondary policy.
The fourth point is that the ISP is a jointly run system and there needs to be much better coordination and consultation. It has to be said that this crisis is, to a large extent, a failure of federalism. The feds and the provinces have not worked closely together enough on this.
I think a lot of the frustration with the reforms this year boils down to a perceived lack of consultation among stakeholders in many quarters. Fixing the system will require coordinated actions in a number of areas that we get into in our reports. These include ensuring integrity in consumer protection and recruitment, enhancing oversight and quality assurance of DLIs, improving academic supports and services for international students and more. I can get into these a bit more in the questions.
My last point is that efforts to renew the system should be built upon a new and long-term international education strategy, as well as efforts or a plan to rebuild brand Canada internationally. In short, many people we've talked to express the view that Canada has lost its way on international education. It has a system that has gradually become overly driven by driving short-term revenues, rather than national objectives and quality outcomes for students. We need a refreshed vision. We need clearer objectives and a refreshed strategy. It should be informed and guided by an extensive consultation process. It should reflect this dramatically changed environment, aligning post-secondary goals with our broader national objectives in immigration, labour markets, regional development and global affairs.
Last, it needs to reconcile the damage we've done to our brand internationally over the past year and think about coordinated approaches for rebuilding Canada's reputation and the trust of prospective students overseas, who were very high on Canada. The survey data we're seeing is that these have eroded reasonably quickly.
Thank you very much. I'll be happy to elaborate more during the question period.
