The era of uncapped intake of international students is now over, federal immigration minister Marc Miller said during a visit to Calgary, adding the cost of lost revenue borne by post-secondary institutions from students who would have been enrolled must be replaced by provincial investment in education.
“We have to make this a system that is more quality-oriented,” Miller told Postmedia.
“We have to make sure that we have more diversity, more qualified, more talented bunch of people coming into the country, and to make sure that they know exactly what they’re getting into — Canada is not a cheap place to live in.”
Miller’s comments on the federal government’s renewed approach to immigration came in an interview on Saturday following a ceremony at Stampede where 25 people were granted Canadian citizenship. The special guests at the event included Miller and Mayor Jyoti Gondek.
Miller stressed the path to citizenship for those people had been a long, grinding one. “And they’re going to make Canada even better than what it is already the best country in the world.” But he also emphasized citizenship was a privilege and not a right for everyone who entered the country.
He added: “We need to take a step back and look at the historic volumes of people coming here and their impact on housing and health care, on education and the infrastructure needs of this country,” while recognizing, “that a lot of those people aren’t necessary to maintain the health-care system that we have as part of our national identity free health care.”
Canada’s population grew by 1.3 million or 3.2 per cent in 2023. The growth was mainly led by temporary immigration, which accounted for more than 800,000 people, taking the number of temporary residents to 2.7 million — almost double than their share more than two years ago. One of the main streams of such immigration is international students.
The federal government in January envisioned slashing the number of student permits by 35 per cent to ease the pressure on housing and other kinds of infrastructure, along with tamping down on institutions that treat international students as cash cows. However, the program, which tailored the cap on student permits to each province, allotted more permits to Alberta than the share of international students the province usually receives.
Masters and PhD students will be exempt from the cap.
Some students have had to pay a six-month deposit to secure housing in a space with unsafe living conditions while battling unregulated tuition increases. However, the cap is important to stem the tide of unprecedented immigration that has strained the country’s infrastructure, Miller said.
“(Post-secondary institution) can’t be a backdoor entry into becoming a Canadian citizen — there is perhaps a logic for making those people Canadian at some point, but not all of them.”
However, Miller added, immigration is not the sole cause of escalating living costs, including rises in tuition. Historic underfunding in affordable housing and post-secondary institutions has played an important role in making the country’s post-secondary education system unsustainable and reliant on international students who often pay four times the tuition of Canadian residents.
In the 2024 budget, Alberta did not increase spending for post-secondary institutions even as inflation increased by more than 10 per cent in the past two years. The U of C’s student union says the recent allocation translates to a per capita cut of 7.3 per cent.
“If there’s anything that we need to invest in, it’s our kids, and it’s through our best institutions in the world, and when they are getting underfunded, I think it’s shameful,” Miller said.
“I think provincial governments need to take a hard look at their balance sheets and say, ‘Where are we? Where do we invest?’” he added. “And I would humbly say, look at your universities because they are some of the best in the world, and we need to keep financing — it can’t be done simply off the backs of international students.”