Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Sept. 23rd, 2025

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

I'd like what the results were for each year.

[Soyoung Park]

You mean the levels plan and then the admissions against that levels plan.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Yes. Thank you.

Can you share with us what advice you've given the government regarding the long-term strategy for managing the international student program?

[Soyoung Park]

In terms of the advice, as I've mentioned, we've only just embarked on all of the changes within the last 18 months. I tried to cite the time frame in which a lot of the changes were introduced, and that was to suggest that it's going to take some time for us to see some of those results and to ensure that we are making changes based on evidence. There is a certain period of time that is required in order to know whether or not we should continue on that path.

However, I will say this in terms of early results: As of July 31—and this is on our website—there were roughly 786 study permit holders in Canada compared to 995,000 at the end of 2023. That is a 21% reduction.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Okay. This kind of leads me into my next question, if you don't mind.

How many international students are in the country right now on valid student visas?

[Soyoung Park]

As of July 31, 2025, it's a combination, but there are about 499,000 with just study permits. It's 200.... The total is 786,000 who have study permits and work permits.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

There are 786,000.

[Soyoung Park]

Yes.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

How many international student visas have been approved since last year, just in 2025?

[Soyoung Park]

The number of decisions taken so far this year is 174,000.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

It's 174,000. Okay. A quick Google search said that it's 437,000 for the year. Is that an accurate number?

[Soyoung Park]

I'm sorry. What number did you say?

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

I said 437,000.

[Soyoung Park]

That is actually the study permit issuance target, so the number of approvals. There are several numbers. You will see that there's a number for the number of new arrivals. There's also a number for the number of approvals, which actually leads to a certain number of arrivals.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

What advice, if any, has IRCC given the government regarding institutions to take advantage of the international student program?

[Soyoung Park]

My colleague, Aiesha Zafar, has been outlining some of the measures that we've put in place to strengthen the integrity of the reporting system, working with our DLIs. I will re-cite, as well, the 14,000 letters of acceptance that we have actually intercepted. These are ones who didn't even make it here because we were able to intercept them.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

There hasn't been an investigation confirming those 14,000. If so, what action has been taken in your department or by others in the government to bring accountability to the offenders?

[Aiesha Zafar]

When we look at potentially 14,000 fraudulent letters of acceptance, we take the data and look at the indicators in each of those applications. Is there something that's consistent in each of those applications that identifies for us that this is a large-scale fraud or that individuals are trying to circumvent the program? We will issue reports or other types of packages for our officers, so that they can look out for those things in future applications. We've done that in other cohorts as well.

Last year, we were able to determine that there was fraud happening in the visitor program. We did the activities that I just mentioned. We were able to increase the identification of fraud and misrepresentation in that court by 241% over the course of a couple of months. That's the system that we look at. We get information from our partners, get tips, look at our own trends and look at those indicators to see how can that improve our processing and our ability to identify that fraud and abuse in the future.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you.

Do you agree that the number of international students let into the country impacts housing prices? You said that you thought in some communities you've seen it come down somewhat. What proof do you have that the actions you're taking are causing the housing prices or the housing market to slow down? A whole bunch of other factors affect housing prices in the country. I wonder how you identify that as being directly related to the actions you've taken.

[Soyoung Park]

It wasn't us who put that forward. I cited a study by CMHC that looked at some municipalities with universities. They stated that since we put in some of the measures to control volumes and some of the other measures, there has been a decrease on pressures in the housing market.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dzerowicz]

Thank you, Ms. Park.

Thank you, Mr. Menegakis.

Our next questioner will be Ms. Sodhi for five minutes, please.

[Amandeep Sodhi, Liberal, Brampton Centre, ON]

First and foremost, I want to thank you guys for taking time out of your day to meet with us.

I'd like to frame my first question around international student fraud and the abuse that some of them may face. Can either one of you please outline what recent steps IRCC has taken to combat instances of fraud experienced by international students?

[Aiesha Zafar]

We talked about the integrity measures we've put in place and strengthened over the last couple of years. A couple of them will relate to the conditions that international students may face when they come into Canada. The first, as my colleague mentioned earlier, is the increase of the financial requirement. This ensures that students who are coming into Canada are able to support themselves financially. They will be able to house and feed themselves and then conduct their studies and go to school.

We've also put in the letter of acceptance verification program. This is key. As many members are aware, in 2023, jointly with the Canada Border Services Agency, we identified that there was a significant letter of acceptance fraud. There were international students who were victims of that fraud and didn't know that those letters of acceptance were fraudulent. Our ability now, for every single student permit, for our officers to automatically verify with the learning institution that the letter of acceptance is actually authentic, has resulted in that 14,000 number that we presented, where we've identified potentially fraudulent letters of acceptance. This protects the students as well.

In terms of student compliance, we do require, as I mentioned, designated learning institutions to confirm for us twice a year that students are actually registered. Where we see that there is no match or that they are potentially not registered or attending school, we're able to conduct our own investigation. The learning institution can follow up. We will be starting to share that data with provinces and territories as well in the spring so that they can also follow up to see whether it in fact is fraud or if there's some other reason that the student is not attending. We would be able to collectively address the gaps in that way.

[Amandeep Sodhi, Liberal, Brampton Centre, ON]

Thank you for your answer. I think it was very well detailed.

You mentioned the use of CBSA. Can you tell us how the tools that will be provided by Bill C-2 will allow IRCC to better combat immigration fraud stemming from the international student program?

[Aiesha Zafar]

Under Bill C-2, one of the provisions we are looking for is the ability for greater information sharing in the immigration program. Right now we do not have the legislated ability, except for the Privacy Act, to share personal immigration information for purposes other than assessing the application.

That means a couple of things. We're not able to share personal information with provinces and territories to make sure that individuals who are accessing provincial benefits, for instance, or social services are actually in status. We are not able to share certain pieces of information with our federal partners outside of the immigration stream.

Perhaps most importantly, for me, is that currently we are not able to share immigration information on applications between our business lines. That means we look at every application as an independent individual application. If somebody applies to be a temporary resident as a student and then later on applies to be a permanent resident, we're looking at those as separate applications. We can't share the information that was provided throughout their immigration process all the way until they become a permanent resident or citizen. In order to improve the integrity and fraud in the system but also help those individuals—they don't have to send us the same information, and we can omit errors this way as well—Bill C-2 will help with that information sharing.