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)
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Democrats who control both chambers of the Virginia legislature are hoping to make good on promises made on the campaign trail, including becoming the first Southern state to expand constitutional protections for abortion access.
The House Privileges and Elections Committee advanced three proposed constitutional amendments Wednesday, including a measure to protect reproductive rights. Its members also discussed measures to repeal a now-defunct state constitutional ban on same-sex marriage and ways to revise Virginia’s process to restore voting rights for people who served time for felony crimes.
“This meeting was an important next step considering the moment in history we find ourselves in,” Democratic Del. Cia Price, the committee chair, said during a news conference. “We have urgent threats to our freedoms that could impact constituents in all of the districts we serve.”
The at-times raucous meeting will pave the way for the House and Senate to take up the resolutions early next year after lawmakers tabled the measures last January. Democrats previously said the move was standard practice, given that amendments are typically introduced in odd-numbered years. But Republican Minority Leader Todd Gilbert said Wednesday the committee should not have delved into the amendments before next year’s legislative session. He said the resolutions, particularly the abortion amendment, need further vetting.
“No one who is still serving remembers it being done in this way ever,” Gilbert said after the meeting. “Certainly not for something this important. This is as big and weighty an issue as it gets.”
The Democrats’ legislative lineup comes after Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin, to the dismay of voting-rights advocates, rolled back a process to restore people’s civil rights after they completed sentences for felonies. Virginia is the only state that permanently bans anyone convicted of a felony from voting unless a governor restores their rights.
“This amendment creates a process that is bounded by transparent rules and criteria that will apply to everybody — it’s not left to the discretion of a single individual,” Del. Elizabeth Bennett-Parker, the patron of the voting rights resolution, which passed along party lines, said at the news conference.
Though Democrats have sparred with the governor over their legislative agenda, constitutional amendments put forth by lawmakers do not require his signature, allowing the Democrat-led House and Senate to bypass Youngkin’s blessing.
Instead, the General Assembly must pass proposed amendments twice in at least two years, with a legislative election sandwiched between each statehouse session. After that, the public can vote by referendum on the issues. The cumbersome process will likely hinge upon the success of all three amendments on Democrats’ ability to preserve their edge in the House and Senate, where they hold razor-thin majorities.
It’s not the first time lawmakers have attempted to champion the three amendments. Republicans in a House subcommittee killed a constitutional amendment to restore voting rights in 2022, a year after the measure passed in a Democrat-led House. The same subcommittee also struck down legislation supporting a constitutional amendment to repeal an amendment from 2006 banning marriage equality.
On Wednesday, a bipartisan group of lawmakers voted 16-5 in favor of legislation protecting same-sex marriage, with four Republicans supporting the resolution.
“To say the least, voters enacted this (amendment) in 2006, and we have had 100,000 voters a year become of voting age since then,” said Del. Mark Sickles, who sponsored the amendment as one of the first openly gay men serving in the General Assembly. “Many people have changed their opinions of this as the years have passed.”
A constitutional amendment protecting abortion previously passed the Senate in 2023 but died in a Republican-led House. On Wednesday, the amendment passed on party lines.
If successful, the resolution proposed by House Majority Leader Charniele Herring would be part of a growing trend of reproductive rights-related ballot questions given to voters. Since 2022, 18 questions have gone before voters across the U.S., and they have sided with abortion rights advocates 14 times.
The voters have approved constitutional amendments ensuring the right to abortion until fetal viability in nine states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Ohio and Vermont. Voters also passed a right-to-abortion measure in Nevada in 2024, but it must be passed again in 2026 to be added to the state constitution.
As lawmakers debated the measure, roughly 18 members spoke. Mercedes Perkins, at 38 weeks pregnant, described the importance of women making decisions about their own bodies. Rhea Simon, another Virginia resident, anecdotally described how reproductive health care shaped her life.
Then all at once, more than 50 people lined up to speak against the abortion amendment.
“Let’s do the compassionate thing and care for mothers and all unborn children,” resident Sheila Furey said.
The audience gave a collective “Amen,” followed by a round of applause.
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Associated Press writer Geoff Mulvihill in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, contributed to this report.
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Olivia Diaz is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative.
Vancouver Canucks winger Dakota Joshua is set to make his season debut Thursday after missing time for cancer treatment.
Head coach Rick Tocchet says Joshua will slot into the lineup Thursday when Vancouver (8-3-3) hosts the New York Islanders.
The 28-year-old from Dearborn, Mich., was diagnosed with testicular cancer this summer and underwent surgery in early September.
He spoke earlier this month about his recovery, saying it had been “very hard to go through” and that he was thankful for support from his friends, family, teammates and fans.
“That was a scary time but I am very thankful and just happy to be in this position still and be able to go out there and play,,” Joshua said following Thursday’s morning skate.
The cancer diagnosis followed a career season where Joshua contributed 18 goals and 14 assists across 63 regular-season games, then added four goals and four assists in the playoffs.
Now, he’s ready to focus on contributing again.
“I expect to be good, I don’t expect a grace period. I’ve been putting the work in so I expect to come out there and make an impact as soon as possible,” he said.
“I don’t know if it’s going to be perfect right from the get-go, but it’s about putting your best foot forward and working your way to a point of perfection.”
The six-foot-three, 206-pound Joshua signed a four-year, US$13-million contract extension at the end of June.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 14, 2024.
NEW YORK (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump says he will nominate anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, putting him in charge of a massive agency that oversees everything from drug, vaccine and food safety to medical research and the social safety net programs Medicare and Medicaid.
“For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to Public Health,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social site announcing the appointment. Kennedy, he said, would “Make America Great and Healthy Again!”
Kennedy, a former Democrat who ran as an independent in this year’s presidential race, abandoned his bid after striking a deal to give Trump his endorsement with a promise to have a role in health policy in the administration.
He and Trump have since become good friends, with Kennedy frequently receiving loud applause at Trump’s rallies.
The expected appointment was first reported by Politico Thursday.
A longtime vaccine skeptic, Kennedy is an attorney who has built a loyal following over several decades of people who admire his lawsuits against major pesticide and pharmaceutical companies. He has pushed for tighter regulations around the ingredients in foods.
With the Trump campaign, he worked to shore up support among young mothers in particular, with his message of making food healthier in the U.S., promising to model regulations imposed in Europe. In a nod to Trump’s original campaign slogan, he named the effort “Make America Healthy Again.”
It remains unclear how that will square with Trump’s history of deregulation of big industries, including food. Trump pushed for fewer inspections of the meat industry, for example.
Kennedy’s stance on vaccines has also made him a controversial figure among Democrats and some Republicans, raising question about his ability to get confirmed, even in a GOP-controlled Senate. Kennedy has espoused misinformation around the safety of vaccines, including pushing a totally discredited theory that childhood vaccines cause autism.
He also has said he would recommend removing fluoride from drinking water. The addition of the material has been cited as leading to improved dental health.
HHS has more than 80,000 employees across the country. It houses the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Medicare and Medicaid programs and the National Institutes of Health.
Kennedy’s anti-vaccine nonprofit group, Children’s Health Defense, currently has a lawsuit pending against a number of news organizations, among them The Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines. Kennedy took leave from the group when he announced his run for president but is listed as one of its attorneys in the lawsuit.
