Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Feb. 28th, 2024

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Miller, in an article published by Bloomberg, you said that students were being exploited.

You said you have a shared responsibility.

I would like you to admit that your predecessor was partly responsible for this catastrophic situation, which resulted in students being seen as a source of income and not as people who come to study in Canada.

[Marc Miller, Liberal, Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs, QC]

We all have a responsibility.

However, you should know that, in terms of making money on the backs of these people, the federal government has made zero dollars, the provinces may have made $1,000 per person, and some educational institutions have made $50,000 or $60,000.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you very much, Mr. Berthold.

I will go to Mr. Ali. Mr. Ali, go ahead for five minutes, please.

[Shafqat Ali, Liberal, Brampton Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Minister and officials, for coming here before the committee.

Minister, can you get into more details about how the international student cap works? How were the provincial allocations determined, and who is responsible for deciding if international students are issued a study permit by IRCC?

[Marc Miller, Liberal, Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs, QC]

Thank you, MP Ali.

It's important to take a step back in answering this question to understand that my statutory role and my statutory ability to create caps—

[Shafqat Ali, Liberal, Brampton Centre, ON]

On a point of order, I'm having a hard time listening because there is noise from the other side.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

We'll start the clock again.

Go ahead if you want to ask your question again or if you want the Minister to start. I have stopped the clock.

[Shafqat Ali, Liberal, Brampton Centre, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Do you want the minister to reply?

[Shafqat Ali, Liberal, Brampton Centre, ON]

Yes, please.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Honourable minister, go ahead, please.

[Marc Miller, Liberal, Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs, QC]

It's important to take a step back in looking at this cap to look at what my statutory authorities are. I can only cap the applications and not the actual issuance of visas. The way it works through the math is that we assume a level of acceptance and rejection at our level, and it churns out a bunch of visas.

The first measure was that we capped the intake at a certain level, and then we distributed it generally by population across Canada. That has resulted in some provinces—Alberta, Quebec, and others—being able to potentially go up by 10%. We don't want unbridled growth, so we've put some limits there. It will result in some provinces having to reduce in certain categories, particularly with these business degrees that have varying levels of legitimacy, and at the undergraduate level by 10%, 20%, 30%, and even 35% to 40% at times. It depends. We are still in discussion with the provinces, but the access is done in a spirit of equity and is spread out by province. That is very important, because there were some provinces that were doing better than others, and some provinces just needed to get their ships in order.

The second measure was to eliminate the ability for private and public institutions to get post-graduate permits. Those are some of the ones that are least regulated and subject to some of the most abuse. Hopefully, that signs a bit of a death knell for those institutions.

The third measure was to limit the availability of spousal permits to those people doing master's and Ph.Ds to attack a volume challenge as well as integrity challenges in an area that we believe was being exploited and was not necessarily legitimate.

That was the spirit in which we did it, and it was coupled with the measures that I took in the fall to increase the solvency requirements for people wanting to come to Canada.

This is not the be-all and the end-all; there is a lot of work to be done. These are mostly quantitative steps, and there are some qualitative steps that need to be taken by provinces in their own jurisdictions to make sure that the program can live up to what it was intended to be in the first place—to attract excellence and not volume. It's not an attempt to get more entries into Canada or for certain institutions to triple or quadruple their fees simply because they are underfunded by their provinces.

[Shafqat Ali, Liberal, Brampton Centre, ON]

Minister, I was with you at Sheridan College when you first addressed this international student issue in Brampton. You went in as soon as you took over. It was brought to your attention, and you took action, so thank you so much for that.

A few years ago our government commissioned an economic report on the economic impact of international education in Canada. The resulting report indicated that in 2018, for example, international students in Canada spent $22.3 billion on tuition, accommodation and discretionary spending, which translated into a $19.7 billion contribution to Canada's economy in that year. Ontario benefited from 55.3% of that contribution. Economists estimated that international students' annual spending in that year supported 218,577 jobs and contributed $3.7 billion in tax revenues. One of the other benefits to Canada is that international students supported the hospitality sector by working in restaurants and hotels, for example.

Is there a plan to compensate or counteract the loss of these contributions that might occur as a result of restricting the number of students?

[Marc Miller, Liberal, Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs, QC]

It's an exceedingly good question. It's hard to answer it in 15 seconds, Shafqat.

We need to work with provinces to make sure they are not chasing bad money for short-term gain and creating the long-term pain impact that we've seen on our asylum system, or creating a situation in which people are undocumented here simply because we don't have a permanent resident space to accommodate them. The economic impact is significant.

In broad terms, international students are a huge contribution to the economy, but there are some actors sitting on $100 million on their balance sheets in some colleges, and that doesn't make sense in a system where, largely, domestic tuition is capped. There is something wrong with that, and I think we need to fix that, at the risk of leaving money on the table. We'll have to work with provinces to make sure that the unintended consequences can be mitigated, but we need them to work with us.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you very much, Mr. Ali and Mr. Miller.

I will now go to my dear friend Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe for two and a half minutes.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Minister, in 2022, following a request from the Bloc Québécois, this committee conducted a study on the unfairness of the approval rate for applications for study permits from francophone African students compared to that of foreign students from elsewhere in the world. There were record refusal rates of up to 90%.

Recommendations have been made, and in my opinion, the most important one is recommendation 15. I'm going to remind you of it, since it's normal for you not to know it by heart. According to this recommendation, the intent to settle in Canada should not impede the obtaining of a study permit.

Have you implemented that recommendation?

[Marc Miller, Liberal, Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs, QC]

No.

However, among the measures that must be put in place to ensure that students, especially francophones, stay here and have access to permanent residence, especially in regions outside Quebec where we want to promote the sustainability of the francophone community, that is the one I want to facilitate.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

You're not answering my question. I'm not talking about their situation once they get here; they first have to get here.

Recommendation 15 is that the intent to remain in Canada should not become a barrier to obtaining a study permit. You're talking to me about those who are already here and who will have permanent residence. But they have to get here first and, to get here, first and foremost, they need a visa. A visa has to be issued. Are you going to implement that recommendation? That was the key recommendation by all educational institutions in Quebec.

[Marc Miller, Liberal, Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs, QC]

We're looking at that. What I can say about these unacceptably low rates is that they have increased very recently. The Government of Quebec could also put in place a number of measures to encourage that increase. I'm prepared to do the same.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Okay. That recommendation was made two years ago. Doing things for the sake of doing them, we know what that means. It would be good if you implemented the recommendation.

You're the third immigration minister in four and a half years. Do you think it's normal for such an important file to be changing hands every 18 months?

[Marc Miller, Liberal, Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs, QC]

I don't make those decisions. I feel I'm not the right person in place right now, but I—

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Do you find it productive to change the Minister of Immigration every 18 months?

[Marc Miller, Liberal, Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs, QC]

Look, I know Mr. Fraser, Mr. Mendicino and Mr. Hussen very well, and even Mr. McCallum before them.

I think they have been extremely effective.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you very much, Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe and Minister.

Now we will go to Madam Kwan for two and a half minutes, and then we'll suspend.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

We were talking about unintended consequences from the cap and also the requirement for $20,000 in people's personal accounts.

When the minister made this decision and announced this cap, did the department undertake any evaluation of what those unintended consequences might be?