Evidence of meeting #7 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was universities.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Brad Redekopp Conservative Saskatoon West, SK
Okay. Then it came as a surprise when they announced the cap on study permits in 2024.
President, Conestoga College
That's difficult to answer. I think what was starting to happen here—
Conservative
Brad Redekopp Conservative Saskatoon West, SK
I'm sorry. I don't mean to interrupt you, but I think we understand that there were a lot of things that happened. I think there must have been some element of surprise.
Then minister Sean Fraser allowed unlimited study permits, a system that Conestoga adapted to, but then minister Marc Miller pulled the rug out from under that system with, surprise, hard caps. Is the Liberal government to blame for creating this mess?
President, Conestoga College
Well, I think what we have done all along is work with the feds, work with the province and work with municipalities and industry. They certainly wanted us to grow dramatically because they couldn't fill positions across a wide range of industries: health care, skilled trades.... It's a huge issue in our community. There's no question that we needed to grow dramatically—no question.
Conservative
Brad Redekopp Conservative Saskatoon West, SK
You're saying that the federal government was encouraging you to grow the student population as much as you could.
Conservative
Brad Redekopp Conservative Saskatoon West, SK
Prior to these surprise caps, did any Immigration Canada officials contact you with concerns about the availability of student housing?
Conservative
Brad Redekopp Conservative Saskatoon West, SK
The government was oblivious to this or didn't care about housing, I guess—
President, Conestoga College
We spent about $300 million on additional housing, leases, purchasing.... We set up a housing office to help students.
Conservative
Brad Redekopp Conservative Saskatoon West, SK
When this great growth in your student population happened in 2022, 2023 and 2024, your population increased by 16,000 students. With the housing shortage in the area, students had to live with sometimes dozens or more people in one house.
Is it safe to assume that you were more concerned with the potential revenue from these students than with the living conditions of the students?
President, Conestoga College
No. It was never our intention. It was not the money. I know that one gentleman was talking about the funding. That's not why we grew the international. We grew the international because we don't have enough domestic students to fill the jobs in our region. That's the reason we did it. We invested every bit of that back into the community.
Conservative
Brad Redekopp Conservative Saskatoon West, SK
You said, “all our students found housing”. You're telling me that in those years—2022, 2023, 2024—there were no students who had to live with 14 in a room, and there were no students living under bridges.
President, Conestoga College
I don't think anyone was living under a bridge. I know there was a picture, but I don't think anyone was.
In our area, don't forget that we were across six cities, so students were able to find places with our help. We know that because we worked with the students. There may have been three or four people in a house but—
Conservative
Brad Redekopp Conservative Saskatoon West, SK
Let's switch gears and talk about living expenses.
The Liberals required students to have $10,000 a year, which you must have known was not enough to live in the region, but you didn't do anything about this—
Conservative
Brad Redekopp Conservative Saskatoon West, SK
—and that caused students to go to food banks to survive. Doesn't this prove that you're more interested in tuition dollars than in your students' living conditions?
President, Conestoga College
No. First of all, we informed students, as part of the recruitment process, about what the real costs were of coming to Canada. You have to remember that a lot of students really wanted to come to Canada. However, we informed them of that.
As for the food banks, we had food security programs on every campus. We reimbursed the food banks at least $30,000 or $40,000. We worked with them. There were food security programs on each campus across the six cities.
Conservative
Brad Redekopp Conservative Saskatoon West, SK
Dr. Tibbits, you had $550 million in your bank account on March 31 of this year. Do you deserve your $600,000 salary?
President, Conestoga College
That's the salary I'm being paid, and I take the job very seriously.
We have poured at least $500 million back into the community. This year alone, we're spending about $140 million on investing in services. We're spending $80 million a year on student supports.
Conservative
Brad Redekopp Conservative Saskatoon West, SK
When you spoke about your colleague and called him a “whore”, he was speaking about the bad actors. Conestoga's name always comes up in that list. Is Conestoga a bad actor?
President, Conestoga College
We have always worked with the three levels of government to provide services and really meet our objectives, and that is to stimulate the economy.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Michelle Rempel
Thank you. You are out of time.
We will go over to Ms. Sodhi for five minutes.
Liberal
Amandeep Sodhi Liberal Brampton Centre, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you to our three witnesses for being here today.
Ms. Trilokekar, in your opening speech, you mentioned using international students as a soft power. Are you able to further expand on this?