Documents obtained by CBC News reveal which colleges and universities account for the greatest share of Canada’s steep growth in international students, and which now have the most to lose from a new cap on permits to study in this country.
The data, obtained through access to information requests to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), shows the number of study permits granted each year since 2018 for foreign students to attend post-secondary institutions across the country.
The figures have never before been made fully available to the general public. See the data for yourself at the bottom of this story.
A CBC News analysis of the data reveals that what has been framed as a nationwide explosion in international student numbers — prompting Ottawa to impose an immediate two-year cap — is disproportionately linked to a handful of schools, the vast bulk of them public institutions, predominantly in Ontario.
Of the 30 Canadian colleges and universities granted the most international study permits last year, all but one are public.
Just 10 Ontario public colleges account for nearly 30 per cent of all study permits issued across the country over the past three years.
Twelve Ontario public colleges have at least tripled their annual permit numbers since 2018.
The data calls into question claims by both federal and provincial politicians blaming “bad actors” among private colleges for fuelling the spike in international students.
The data also shines a light on what experts say was really driving Canada’s dramatic rise in foreign student enrolment: Governments of all stripes actively pursuing international students both to shore up the skilled workforce and to bring hefty revenues into underfunded colleges and universities, with little regard for the ensuing demand for housing.
“It’s a cash cow,” said Richard Kurland, an immigration lawyer and policy analyst in Vancouver. “Each student likely generates at least $20,000 for an educational institution, and we’re talking about thousands and thousands of students.”
Foreign students paid billions amid austerity measures
Over the six-year period covered by the data, more than 1.5 million study permits were issued for students to attend some 1,300 colleges and universities.
That translates into international students paying tens of billions of dollars into Canada’s post-secondary system — at a time when provincial governments were imposing austerity measures on public universities and colleges.
In Ontario, the data shows foreign students recruitment has spiked significantly since 2018, when Premier Doug Ford took office.
The following year, Ford’s government froze post-secondary funding, cut domestic tuition by 10 per cent and launched a program explicitly designed to attract international students and their lucrative tuition fees to public colleges.
Earl Blaney, an immigration consultant and advocate for international students in London, Ont., calls the recent growth in international study permits in Ontario ‘explosive and reckless.’ (David Macintosh/CBC)
Ontario’s public colleges alone accounted for more than 40 per cent of the 435,000 study permits issued to colleges and universities nationwide in 2023.
The growth in Ontario in recent years has been “explosive and reckless,” said Earl Blaney, an immigration consultant and advocate for international students in London, Ont.
Public colleges — not private — are main destination
“I’m shocked that it’s got to this state,” Blaney said after CBC News showed him the data. “The problem is everyone else has been clapping along, because everyone’s making a ton of money off this.”
The overall rapid growth in international students and the pressure their numbers have put on housing, particularly in southern Ontario and B.C.’s Lower Mainland, prompted the federal government to impose a cap on study permit applications for the next two years.
Both Canada’s immigration minister and Ontario’s premier have since tried to pin blame on private colleges, despite the data clearly showing public colleges and universities have been the prime destinations for international students.
Immigration Minister Marc Miller said in January some private colleges in Canada are the “equivalent of puppy mills that are just churning out diplomas,” but didn’t name names.
Immigration Minister Marc Miller and Ontario Premier Doug Ford have both placed responsibility for the rapid growth in international students on private colleges, with Miller calling them ‘equivalent of puppy mills.’ However, federal data analyzed by CBC News shows that public — not private — colleges and universities have largely driven the surge. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)
Miller commented further on Tuesday morning, after CBC News published the data.
“Some of the really, really bad actors are in the private sphere, and those need to be shut down, but there is responsibility across the board,” he told reporters on Parliament Hill. “We just need the provinces in question, in this case Ontario, to assume their responsibility.”
At a news conference last week, Ford was asked about his government’s plans regarding international students.
“There’s some bad actors in the private sector colleges,” Ford said. “I just believe in working within the ministry to kind of shoo out the bad actors, encourage the good colleges and universities to keep moving forward.”
CBC News asked Ford’s office for comment Tuesday morning and has yet to receive a response.
Easier path to permanent residence
Observers pin the responsibility for Canada’s spike in international students on both provincial and federal governments.
Various changes to federal immigration rules through the 2010s gave foreign students three-year work permits for completing just about any post-secondary program in Canada, and an easier pathway to citizenship.
“It was foreseeable that the volume of students coming to pursue permanent residency in Canada — with education being just incidental — would skyrocket,” said Blaney.
“What was not foreseeable is the fact that the government would do nothing about it during that period, despite the fact that they were well aware that this was going on.”
“There’s a lot of money on the table,” said Kurland. “Colleges and universities have now hit the panic button… because they don’t know next year how many students the province is willing to send them.”
When the immigration minister announced the cap, he said it will reduce the overall number of permits granted nationally by about 35 per cent, but the provinces that brought in disproportionately higher numbers of foreign students would feel the pinch more intensely.
Big drops in permits, big drop in revenue
Ontario’s is expecting as much as a 50 per cent drop in permits. That could mean around 100,000 fewer international students will get permission to study in the province this year than in 2023.
With those students paying at least $15,000 per year for college programs, and more than double that for university degrees, rough math suggests Ontario faces losing upwards of $1.5 billion in revenue.
Ontario has yet to make clear how it will divvy up its allocation of study permits among its colleges and universities, or how it will make up for the looming loss in revenue.
On Monday, the Ford government announced a $1.3 billion boost to post-secondary funding, spread over the next three years. That falls well short of the $2.5 billion increase recommended for the same timeframe by the government’s own panel of experts in November, before the cap on international study permits was imposed.
On Monday, the government of Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced a $1.3-billion boost to post-secondary, spread over three years — short of the $2.5 billion increase recommended by his government’s own panel of experts in November, before the cut to international student permits was imposed. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
Reporters pressed Ontario’s Minister of Colleges and Universities, Jill Dunlop, about how the government intends to make up for the loss in revenue from international students, but she repeatedly refused to give a direct answer.
“This is going to have an impact on the economy not just here in Ontario but across Canada,” Dunlop said. “We recognize the disruption that the international students announcement has made.”
It all has observers predicting a battle over the shrinking pie of foreign students.
“Schools are being pitted against other schools,” said Kurland. “It’s Darwinism. If you put a lot of creatures in one basket, at some point they’re going to eat each other if there’s insufficient food.”
One example of that is a recent war of words between the presidents of two colleges: Conestoga College in Kitchener, Ont., which was granted more than 30,000 study permits in 2023, and Sault College, granted about 3,500 permits in 2023, mostly for students attending its satellite campuses in Toronto and Brampton, Ont.
Conestoga topped the list of Canadian colleges and universities for international student study permits in four of the past five years.
More than 30,000 international students were granted study permits in 2023 to attend Conestoga College in Kitchener, Ont., more than any other post-secondary institution in Canada. Conestoga topped the national list in four of the past five years. (Cameron Mahler/CBC)
“Our growth over the last few years has been tied to our mission: to meet workforce demands in the communities we serve,” said Brenda Bereczki, Conestoga’s director of corporate communications, in a statement to CBC News.
“Communities across the country are experiencing a similar need for skilled full-time workers,” said Bereczki. “The provincial and federal governments responded by encouraging growth in immigration and international student enrolment. ”
Filling gaps in skilled workers
CBC News contacted the 10 institutions across Canada that saw the largest increases in study permits granted from 2018 to 2023.
A common theme in the responses from those that commented: Schools were simply doing what the federal and provincial governments wanted them to do.
“Senior levels of government – federal and provincial – have spoken numerous times publicly about the lack of skilled workers now and projected into the future and how immigration is absolutely essential to filling those gaps,” said Daniel Lessard, manager of communications for Cambrian College, whose main campus is in Sudbury, Ont.
“We have absolutely grown. But that growth has been aligned with the overall immigration and labour force efforts of both the federal and provincial government,” said Lessard in an email to CBC News.
Key findings in the data obtained from IRCC suggest Ontario’s public colleges specifically have a lot to lose from a deep cut to foreign student intake:
In 2023, permits were issued to 175,000 international students to study at Ontario’s public colleges, more than four times the number issued for the province’s universities.
In each of the last three years, the national top 10 list of schools with the most international study permits included eight Ontario public colleges.
Ontario’s public colleges account for 19 of the 25 Canadian schools with the most permits issued since 2021.
There’s another factor that will impact the 15 Ontario colleges that offer programs through what are known as public college-private partnerships, in which a private college delivers the public college’s curriculum, typically at a satellite campus.
Under the changes announced by Miller in January, the federal government will no longer grant a three-year post-graduate work permit to international students who complete these programs.
At least 23,000 permits were issued to international students to enrol in Ontario’s public college-private partnership programs in 2023. However, the number was almost certainly higher, because the IRCC data does not separate out the figures for such programs at seven of the 15 colleges with public-private partnerships.
As such, to accurately reflect the overall volume of permits approved at each college, CBC News grouped study permit figures for all public colleges with private partnerships or with multiple campuses in the same province.
WATCH | International students just ‘looking for a better life’:
What this Iranian doctor wants you to know about her experience studying in Canada
20 hours ago
Duration 0:50
Shabnoor Abdullateef, 34, is a medical doctor from Iran who moved to London, Ont., to pursue a postgraduate certificate in health care administration management at Fanshawe College. Abdullateef says that despite just looking for a better life, some international students are made to feel unwelcome. “We are looking to work and pay taxes,” she said. “We are not asking for anything for free.”
Shabnoor Abdullateef, an elected member of the student union at Fanshawe College in London, Ont., says many fellow international students have come to her expressing stress and anxiety regarding the shift in Canada’s policies and the backlash against them over the housing crisis.
“Please don’t put all of this on us,” Abdullateef said in an interview. “I don’t see this as international students’ fault.”
2-year college program costing $33K
Abdullateef is a medical doctor from Iran, working on a two-year postgraduate certificate in health care administration management at Fanshawe, at a cost of $33,000.
When CBC News showed her the data indicating that some colleges ramped up their recruitment of international students by factors of three, four or five times and more over recent years, she described it as shocking.
“Now I can understand why they’re putting caps for international students,” said Abdullateef.
“It feels like schools are not there to help us, but to get our money,” she said. “They don’t care what will happen with this many students coming in, how they will find a home, how they can find health care. But it’s just about numbers, right?”
Students covered in colourful powder dance at a Holi celebration on Fanshawe College’s south campus. (Michelle Both/CBC)
Despite training as a physician in her home country, Abdullateef is anxious about her prospects of finding relevant work in Canada come springtime.
“You can have a Master’s degree, you can have a doctorate degree, and yet you cannot find a suitable job,” she said. “I have the self-confidence that I’m qualified enough for any job I can get into, but believe it or not, I’m not finding a job so far.”
CBC News asked Fanshawe College to comment on what the data shows about its growth in recruitment of international students: more than 11,700 permits granted in 2023, nearly triple its number from 2018.
“We are very proud of our ongoing track record of high-quality education and student experience for students across the globe,” said an email from Fanshawe’s media relations department. “We continue to graduate students who fill the growing needs of the province and the communities we serve.”
METHODOLOGY: How CBC News analyzed study permit statistics for Canadian post-secondary schools
The data in this story was compiled by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) and obtained informally by CBC through the Access to Information Act. The original release included statistics up to the end of February 2023 and the remainder of the year was obtained through an standard media request. There were minor discrepancies between the two documents: 178 schools appeared on only one but not both documents. For schools that could not be reconciled, the missing years were identified as “NA” (not available).
For eight Ontario colleges with public college-private partnerships, the data provided by IRCC was clearly broken down between students applying for a study permit at the public college itself versus applications made to the public college-private partnership. For seven other colleges with these same partnerships, the data was not differentiated. To accurately reflect the overall volume of applications and approved permits at each college, CBC News grouped study permit figures for all public colleges with private partnerships and, similarly for all colleges operating multiple campuses in the same province.
Data cleaning and analysis: Valerie Ouellet, Senior Data Journalist (January – February 2024)
OTTAWA – Liberal House leader Karina Gould lambasted Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre as a “fraudster” this morning after he said the federal carbon price is going to cause a “nuclear winter.”
Gould was speaking just before the House of Commons is set to reopen following the summer break.
“What I heard yesterday from Mr. Poilievre was so over the top, so irresponsible, so immature, and something that only a fraudster would do,” she said from Parliament Hill.
On Sunday Poilievre said increasing the carbon price will cause a “nuclear winter,” painting a dystopian picture of people starving and freezing because they can’t afford food or heat due the carbon price.
He said the Liberals’ obsession with carbon pricing is “an existential threat to our economy and our way of life.”
The carbon price currently adds about 17.6 cents to every litre of gasoline, but that cost is offset by carbon rebates mailed to Canadians every three months. The Parliamentary Budget Office provided analysis that showed eight in 10 households receive more from the rebates than they pay in carbon pricing, though the office also warned that long-term economic effects could harm jobs and wage growth.
Gould accused Poilievre of ignoring the rebates, and refusing to tell Canadians how he would make life more affordable while battling climate change. The Liberals have also accused the Conservatives of dismissing the expertise of more than 200 economists who wrote a letter earlier this year describing the carbon price as the least expensive, most efficient way to lower emissions.
Poilievre is pushing for the other opposition parties to vote the government down and trigger what he calls a “carbon tax election.”
The recent decision by the NDP to break its political pact with the government makes an early election more likely, but there does not seem to be an interest from either the Bloc Québécois or the NDP to have it happen immediately.
Poilievre intends to bring a non-confidence motion against the government as early as this week but would likely need both the Bloc and NDP to support it.
Gould said she has no “crystal ball” over when or how often Poilievre might try to bring down the government
“I know that the end of the supply and confidence agreement makes things a bit different, but really all it does is returns us to a normal minority parliament,” she said. “And that means that we will work case-by-case, legislation-by-legislation with whichever party wants to work with us. I have already been in touch with all of the House leaders in the opposition parties and my job now is to make Parliament work for Canadians.”
She also insisted the government has listened to the concerns raised by Canadians, and received the message when the Liberals lost a Toronto byelection in June in seat the party had held since 1997.
“We certainly got the message from Toronto-St. Paul’s and have spent the summer reflecting on what that means and are coming back to Parliament, I think, very clearly focused on ensuring that Canadians are at the centre of everything that we do moving forward,” she said.
The Liberals are bracing, however, for the possibility of another blow Monday night, in a tight race to hold a Montreal seat in a byelection there. Voters in LaSalle—Émard—Verdun are casting ballots today to replace former justice minister David Lametti, who was removed from cabinet in 2023 and resigned as an MP in January.
The Conservatives and NDP are also in a tight race in Elmwood-Transcona, a Winnipeg seat that has mostly been held by the NDP over the last several decades.
There are several key bills making their way through the legislative process, including the online harms act and the NDP-endorsed pharmacare bill, which is currently in the Senate.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
GENEVA (AP) — Two former Olympic champions are in the race to be the next IOC president. So is a prince of a Middle East kingdom and the son of a former president. The global leaders of cycling, gymnastics and skiing also are in play.
The International Olympic Committee published a list Monday of seven would-be candidates who are set to run for election in March to succeed outgoing president Thomas Bach for the next eight years.
Just one woman, IOC executive board member Kirsty Coventry from Zimbabwe, entered the contest to lead an organization that has had only male presidents in its 130-year history. Eight of those presidents were from Europe and one from the United States.
Coventry and Sebastian Coe are two-time gold medalists in swimming and running, respectively. Prince Feisal al Hussein of Jordan is also on the IOC board.
Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr. of Spain is one of the four IOC vice presidents, whose father was president for 21 years until 2001.
David Lappartient is the president of cycling’s governing body, Morinari Watanabe leads gymnastics, and Johan Eliasch is president of the International Ski and Snowboard Federation. Coe is the president of track’s World Athletics.
All seven met a deadline of Sunday to send a letter of intent to Bach, who must leave the post next year after reaching the maximum 12 years in office. Bach declined at the Paris Olympics last month to seek to change IOC rules in order to stay in office longer.
A formal candidate list should be confirmed in January, three months before the March 18-21 election meeting in Greece, near the site of Ancient Olympia.
Only IOC members are eligible to stand as candidates, with votes cast by the rest of the 111-strong membership of the Olympic body.
The IOC is one of the most exclusive clubs in world sports. Its members are drawn from European and Middle East royalty, leaders of international sports bodies, former and current Olympic athletes, politicians and diplomats plus industrialists, including some billionaires like Eliasch.
It makes for one of the most discreet and quirky election campaigns in world sports, with members prevented from publicly endorsing their pick.
Campaign limits on the candidates include a block on publishing videos, organizing public meetings and taking part in public debates. The IOC will organize a closed-door meeting for candidates to address voters in January in its home city Lausanne, Switzerland.
The IOC top job ideally calls for deep knowledge of managing sports, understanding athletes’ needs and nimble skills in global politics.
The president oversees an organization that earns billions of dollars in revenue from broadcasting and sponsor deals for the Olympic Games and employs hundreds of staff in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Coe has been widely considered the most qualified candidate. A two-time Olympic champion in the 1,500-meters, he was later an elected lawmaker in Britain in the 1990s, led the 2012 London Olympics organizing committee and has presided at World Athletics for nine years.
However, he has potential legal hurdles regarding his ability to serve a full eight-year mandate. The IOC has an age limit of 70 for members, while Coe will be 68 on election day. The rules allow for a special exemption to remain for four more years, but that would mean a six-year presidency unless those limits are changed.
Coventry, who turned 41 Monday, also has government experience as the appointed sports minister in Zimbabwe.
The only woman ever to stand as an IOC presidential candidate was Anita DeFrantz, a former Olympic rower from the United States. She was eliminated in the first round of voting in a five-candidate election in 2001, which was won by Jacques Rogge.
Lappartient also is president of France’s national Olympic body and has carried strong momentum from the Paris Summer Games. He leads a French Alps project that was picked to host the 2030 Winter Games and was picked by Bach to oversee a long-term project sealed in Paris that will see Saudi Arabia hosting the Esports Olympic Games through 2035.
Eliasch is perhaps the most surprising candidate after being elected as an IOC member in Paris less than two months ago. The Swedish-British owner of the Head sportswear brand got 17 “no” votes, a notably high number in Olympic politics.
TORONTO – Ontario is proposing to further expand pharmacists’ scope of practice by adding to the list of minor ailments they can assess, allowing them to administer more vaccines and order some lab tests.
But while pharmacists see the proposal as an overdue solution to easing the burden on other aspects of the health-care system by leaning more on their professional expertise, doctors are raising concerns.
The government in early 2023 granted pharmacists the ability to assess and treat 13 minor ailments, including pink eye, hemorrhoids and urinary tract infections. In the fall of that year six more were added to the list, including acne, canker sores and yeast infections.
Now, the government is proposing to expand the list to include sore throat, calluses and corns, mild headaches, shingles, minor sleep disorders, fungal nail infections, swimmers’ ear, head lice, nasal congestion, dandruff, ringworm, jock itch, warts and dry eye.
As well, the Ministry of Health is looking for feedback on what lab tests and point-of-care tests might be required for pharmacists to order and perform as part of assessing and treating those conditions.
The government is also considering funding pharmacists to administer tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis, pneumococcal, shingles and RSV vaccines for adults, in addition to COVID-19 and flu vaccines. The province is proposing to allow pharmacy technicians to administer the same vaccines as pharmacists.
“Our government is focused on improving access to care in communities across the province and we have seen the success of our minor ailment program, connecting over 1 million people to treatment for minor ailments,” Hannah Jensen, a spokesperson for Health Minister Sylvia Jones, wrote in a statement.
Justin Bates, CEO of the Ontario Pharmacists Association, said the minor ailments program has been going well so far, and further expanding pharmacists’ scope can help avoid visits to family doctors and emergency rooms.
“We want to build health-care capacity through looking at pharmacies as a health-care hub and the pharmacists’ trusted relationship with their patients and to leverage that, because they are underutilized when it comes to what scope they can do,” he said.
But doctors are pushing back on the scope expansions.
“The bottom line here is that pharmacists are not doctors,” said Dr. Dominik Nowak, president of the Ontario Medical Association. “Doctors are trained for years and thousands of hours to diagnose and treat conditions.”
Nowak said that sometimes the symptoms that would seem to suggest one of those minor ailments are really a sign of a more serious condition, and it takes a doctor to recognize that.
“When I look at a lot of the minor ailments list, I think to myself, there’s nothing minor about many of these,” Nowak said.
“Many of these ailments rely on the patient … one, knowing the diagnosis themselves, so the patient’s own opinion. And last I heard, most of my patients haven’t been to medical school. And then two: it also relies on the patient’s own opinion about whether this is something minor or something serious.”
Bates said he has been “disappointed” at some of the messaging from doctors, and added that any notion that there is an increased risk to patient safety is “misinformation.”
“I want to support OMA and primary care, and I do – in hiring more doctors, solving some of their issues – but it shouldn’t come at the expense of other health professions gaining their … appropriate scope of practice,” he said.
“So it’s not a zero sum game here. We want to have physicians be comfortable with this, but … the way that some of these doctors are responding, it’s almost like hysteria.”
The government’s proposal on its regulatory registry is open for comment until Oct. 20.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
