Feds May Consider Cap on International Students Due to Housing Crisis

A file photo of students on a university campus. Students can apply for positions across Canada through the Federal Student Work Experience Program. (Spiroview Inc/Shutterstock)

Federal Housing Minister Sean Fraser says the government is willing to consider imposing a cap on the number of international students allowed into the country to address a housing shortage and rising rent.

The minister made the comment while answering media questions in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, on Aug. 21 during a three-day meeting of the federal cabinet.

“The International Student Program has seen such growth and in such concentrated areas that it is really starting to put an unprecedented level of demand in some instances on the job market,” said Mr. Fraser, suggesting that the current economic conditions have caused the housing market to be affected in a more pronounced way.

The minister suggested that while immigration “can be used as a tool to bring the workers that we need to build more homes,” the international student program required “some serious thinking.”

“The reality is we’ve got temporary immigration programs that were never designed to see such explosive growth in such a short period of time ... whether it’s for temporary workers, international students, or tourists.”

According to Mr. Fraser, those programs do not have a set number each year the same way there are for permanent residents. In light of this, he said the government needs to work closely with educational institutions to make sure that if they “continue to bring in record numbers of students, that they are being part of the solution making sure that they have a place to live.”

The minister said there have been “stories about the exploitation of international students,” stating that he is “convinced” that there are educational institutions that “have come to exist purely to profit off the backs of vulnerable international students,” and that do not provide a quality education.

Canada hosted more than 800,000 international students last year, and Mr. Fraser, who was formerly immigration minister, suggests that some institutions have five or six times as many students enrolled as there are spaces in the building, and that these agencies continue to “pop up” across the country.

“Not all private colleges should be treated with the same brush. There are good private institutions out there, and separating the wheat from the chaff is going to be a big focus of the work,” he added.

The government plans to admit 500,000 new immigrants to Canada each year until 2025.

However, a new report warned there will be dire consequences for housing, interest rates, social infrastructure, and the economy if the population boom continues at its current pace.

“Balancing Canada’s Pop in Population,” a report released July 26 by senior economists with Toronto Dominion Bank, says economists have been warning that Canada’s population surge is lacking balance and throwing the economy off-kilter by straining economic growth, tax revenues, and the social system.

The report also said that even if population growth is brought back to the long-term average, there will still be a nationwide shortage of approximately 150,000 homes.

Mr. Fraser said the current shortages and challenges in market housing are a “predictable outcome of a lack of investment for several decades.”

“We have to be really careful that we don’t have a conversation that somehow blames newcomers for the housing challenges that have been several decades in the works in Canada,” he said.