The federal government's deeply concerning announcement today on further international student restrictions demonstrates a clear university bias. Such additional restrictions will deepen an already existing crisis in Ontario’s labour market. Without college graduates, Ontario grinds to a halt.
Over the next two years alone, public colleges in Ontario are projected to see a decline of at least $1.7 billion in revenue due to these restrictions.
Ultimately, these changes mean that the workforce Ontarians rely on won't be there. Ontario’s colleges train the workforce necessary to build desperately needed housing, to meet health care needs, and to deliver job creation through crucial talent pipelines for Ontario’s economy like construction, EVs, nuclear energy, advanced manufacturing, life and health sciences and mining. Ontario’s public college system cannot be cut off at the knees like this. With declining international students, and the resulting budgetary crunch, colleges will have to reduce program offerings or cancel them altogether, which means domestic students won’t have the chance to study in programs that are needed to address critical labour shortages.
We urge the province and federal government to work together to ensure the high-demand programs Ontario and Canadians depends on do not collapse.
In the meantime, we will work with the provincial government to help navigate this situation and to minimize the chaos that is sure to ensue, both for international students who were excited to come here for a world-class education, and for the domestic students whose programs are now at risk. These developments highlight the pressing need for immediate action from Ontario and the federal government to address the fiscal challenges facing public colleges and ensure stability for Ontarians.
Examples of impacts:
- Ontario colleges currently lose funding on every domestic student they serve, requiring international student enrolment to keep critical programs afloat.
- The programs most at-risk are the high-cost programs Ontario's workforce needs in technology, healthcare, and trades.
- International students are crucial to addressing Ontario’s health care shortages. Last year there were 1,800 international students in PSW programs and almost 1,000 studying to be practical nurses.
- With over 4,500 international students currently studying ECE programs, these federal changes risk further exacerbating the province’s shortages of early childhood educators.
- Prior to the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada changes, international students accounted for nearly forty per cent of enrolment in critical skilled trades, construction, industry and manufacturing programs in Ontario.
- These students are a key part of the talent pipeline for Ontario's industrial and infrastructure needs, including welding and fabrication technicians (where they are forty per cent of students), mining engineering technicians (seventy per cent of learners are international), and the engineering systems of buildings (fifty per cent of the technician students are international learners).
- This is a policy choice. Ontario’s investments in public college students is the lowest in Canada, roughly half of what college students in other provinces receive.