Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Feb. 28th, 2024

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Minister, for appearing before the committee today.

Minister, as you noted in your opening remarks, international students are not to be blamed for our current housing and infrastructure challenges. In fact, what we have seen is that international students tend to be the victims of the housing crisis, as many landlords have been taking advantage of them and charging outrageous amounts for very cramped basement apartments.

How will these measures you have announced ensure that international students are supported when they arrive here in Canada? What role do we expect the institutions to play in this whole process?

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

It's a very good point, MP Zahid. There's no denying that the increased volume of students has had an impact in an aggregate measure—in certain areas, in particular—on the cost of shelter.

When we look at occupation rates in my home city, we see that they have remained relatively stable. The challenge we have faced is in taking these correlative factors, like the number of students, the volume of students and others, and looking at the causation. I think that is an important, practical, economic and intellectual activity.

Trying to blame immigrants for housing is not only dangerous but false. You only have to look at areas with very low levels of immigration to see the cost of housing soaring, so you can't pin that on the backs of students.

Students are not responsible for the increase in interest rates in the past years. To a large extent—I'm included in this—we have been able to secure relatively free interest on the debt over the last decade or so on the houses we have mortgages on.

There are various factors that contribute to that situation. What we have seen, for example, is that actors like Airbnb should be held to account, because they drive up the cost. That is something we could also analyze when we look at the affordability challenges in this country.

Now, institutions that have been making a lot of money off these students owe it to themselves, to their institutions, to their alumni and to whatever they represent to society to make sure that when they attract people who are paying four or five times the rate that my own children are paying at university, they provide the proper living experience and student experience. That comes with a lot of obligations. It can't just be cashing the cheque and walking away.

I think that is the important lesson to learn from this. The federal government, indeed, has a responsibility to institute some very rough measures to control the intake, but the qualitative responsibility lies largely on the shoulders of the provinces.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Minister, as part of these measures on the international students, you also announced that postgraduate work permits will no longer be issued for those students who are attending institutions with public-private partnerships.

Can you please explain to the committee what public-private partnerships are and why this measure was put in place specifically for these institutions?

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

They're largely private colleges, predominant in Ontario, that have partnered with publicly regulated institutions and have thus been able to access and leverage postgraduate work permits. Those institutions, as you have seen, are largely less regulated than public colleges and universities.

They are the ones that have, in part, been responsible for some of the inequitable growth in the issuance of visas and postgraduate work permits, so there was no longer any reason to issue postgraduate work permits to those institutions.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Since these programs and measures have been announced, I've been getting many inquiries from undergraduate students who had already applied for their spouses' work permits. What will happen in regard to the work permits for the spouses of the undergraduate students who are already in the system? Can those be processed?

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

It's a going-forward measure, Member Zahid, and those ones should, unless I'm mis-characterizing your question, be accepted.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you very much. You have only one second left.

With that, I will go to Mr. Morrice for two and half minutes. Please go ahead.

[Mike Morrice, Green, Kitchener Centre, ON]

First, I want to thank my friend Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe.

Thank you, Chair.

Minister, as you know, I really appreciated working with your office in light of the fact that of the three post-secondary institutions in my community, one of them approved over 30,000 study permit applications in 2023, which was more than a 1600% jump since 2014, and our community doesn't have the necessary infrastructure to receive that exponential jump.

I feel like you've really heard some of the measures I've brought forward in a motion back in the fall to address this situation, including doubling the minimum financial requirement for students who arrive.

My question is with respect to one of the measures that has not been taken up yet, and that's to have IRCC consider limiting visas and permits to an institution if more than 15% of the international students they accept never enrol in a course or withdraw from their studies or transfer out. This is something that has already been put in place by other signatories of a global agreement on ethical practices of recruiting international students. It's called the London statement.

Can you comment on your openness to continue to pursue this measure as part of the plan to do more with respect to the recognized institutions framework?

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

It's a really good question.

Thank you for working with my office on these measures. They are largely measures that are extremely important, as I mentioned to your colleagues. Some of them more important, such as the affordability actions we've taken as a government, but they are not the end of the story.

I have to continue to remind myself that my role as Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship is partly to make sure that I am ensuring that provinces and institutions are exercising their responsibility. There is a large field to occupy there, but if it's not occupied, we are prepared to take additional measures, including looking at factors and equations. We've seen all sorts of different metrics that would inform whether an institution is a recognized institution going forward and to then give them preferential treatment for visas if they can show that the students have the proper experience.

We're willing to entertain further actions, and if you have further suggestions, please work with my team on that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

You have five seconds, Mr. Morrice.

[Mike Morrice, Green, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Thank you, Minister.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you very much.

We'll go to Madam Kwan for two and a half minutes. Please go ahead.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

On the question around student housing, I absolutely think that it is essential for institutions and provinces do their part and I think that the federal government should show leadership and perhaps initiate a program wherein the federal government contributes a third of the funding, institutions provide a third of the funding, and the provinces and territories provide a third of the funding towards the creation of student housing, both for international students and domestic students. That way you can have a robust plan to address the housing needs of the students.

I'm going to park that for a minute and quickly get into the students who were subject to fraud. We have a situation in which students have now been cleared and found to be genuine by the task force, but they have not gotten their passports back yet. I don't know what the holdup is, and I wonder if the minister can comment on that.

Second, there are students who are still waiting to be evaluated by the task force, and the task force work can't proceed because they might be waiting for a date for the IRB to assess the question on their permit on whether or not it was genuine or whether or not there was misrepresentation. They are consequently in a situation in which people are just chasing their tails and they can't get to the task force.

On that question, will the minister agree that instead of making people go through that process with the IRB, the task force evaluation can move forward first so that they can be found to be either a genuine student or not a genuine student?

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

You've asked me a lot of questions in two and a half minutes. You'd make a great reporter. You're already a great MP. There were a lot of shotgun questions.

I want to give you a proper and complete update on that task force. We can get to the bottom of the passport issue, but I have an update for you that I can provide, either as a sidebar or more officially through channels.

I take your point on the passport issues, and we will follow up on that. I don't have an update for you on that.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

What about the whole idea of doing the task force work first, instead of making the student go through the IRB assessment on misrepresentation? As long as the task force has not finished its work and it is not known whether they are genuine or not, making them go through the other process means they're just going to spin their tail, because that misrepresentation piece is always going to be on their file.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

The time is up.

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

MP Kwan, I won't do justice to your question by answering it really quickly, but we can follow up on that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you very much, Minister, for staying late with us today to accommodate the honourable members. Thank you for being accessible to this committee. Hopefully you will stay accessible.

Thank you to you and your deputy ministers and assistant deputy ministers.

The meeting is adjourned.