Canada’s immigration ministry has announced a two-year cap on international student permits, in an attempt to curb record numbers of new arrivals, targeted as a result of Canada’s housing crisis.
Canada announced on Monday that it wanted to cap international student permits for two years, saying it would also stop granting work permits to certain post-graduate students. The cap is expected to result in approximately 360,000 approved study permits in 2024, a 35% decrease from 2023, according to an Immigration Department press release. This temporary two-year cap will be more severe in provinces that have seen a rapid rise in the number of international students, such as Ontario, British Columbia and Nova Scotia.
“International students are vital to Canada and enrich our communities. As such, we have an obligation to ensure that they have access to the resources they need for an enriching academic experience. In Canada, today, this isn’t always the case,” explains Marc Miller, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, in the press release.
The new measures are also intended to “protect a system that has become so lucrative that it has opened the door to abuse,” adds Marc Miller. In recent years, numerous reports have revealed the dubious practices of institutions that massively recruit from abroad to boost their revenues.
CA$2,600 for a room in Toronto
This decision comes in the midst of a national housing crisis that keeps undermining Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s popularity. The supply of housing has failed to keep pace with Canada’s demographic growth, fuelled mainly by immigration, given the country’s aging population. Housing affordability deteriorated sharply during the coronavirus pandemic when house prices soared due to high demand in the context of low borrowing costs.
Many students are faced with exorbitant rents and a rising cost of living, which for some has become unsustainable. Interviewed by Le Journal de Montréal last May, Janelle Diaz, a young expatriate student from Honduras living in Toronto, said: “Landlords ask us to give them references and bank statements, but they don’t want bank statements from my country, so they ask for payments in advance,” explained the 26-year-old student, who was paying 2,600 Canadian dollars a month, or about 1,900 US dollars, for a half-basement room with three flatmates.
A new report published last week by housing websites Urbanation and Rentals.ca shows that the average asking price for rental accommodation in Canada in December was 2,178 Canadian dollars a month (US$1,600), a new record, up 8.6% compared to last year.
An increase in the number of permanent residents
Federal officials reportedly warned the government two years ago that large increases in immigration could affect access to housing and other services, according to internal documents obtained by The Canadian Press and covered by CBC.
The Department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship would have analyzed the potential effects of immigration on the economy, housing and services as it prepared its immigration targets for 2023–2025. Among other things, the deputy minister was warned in 2022 that housing construction had not kept pace with population growth.
Despite the warnings, the federal government had decided to increase the number of permanent residents that Canada would welcome per year to 500,000 in 2025, doubling the number of permanent residents compared to 2015 figures.
Conservative opposition leader Pierre Poilievre had attacked Trudeau over housing shortages late last year, gaining a considerable lead in opinion polls ahead of the 2025 election.
In response, the Trudeau government has made housing its top priority and announced a series of measures, including a plan to convert federal properties into new homes by March, and the revival of a strategy launched after WWII of using pre-approved models to build homes faster and more economically.
Housing Minister Sean Fraser said at the time that public consultations on the strategy, which was used in the 1950s and 1970s when demand for housing rose after soldiers returned home, would begin in January.
