Social Policy in Ontario

Canada’s international student crisis was predicted — and ignored

Posted on December 10, 2024 in Education Debates

Source: TheStar.com — Authors: Mark Bulgutch

TheStar.com – Opinion/Contributors
Dec. 10, 2024.   By Mark Bulgutch Contributor

The Council of Ontario Universities says losing international students, who pay tuition fees up to five times higher than Canadian students, could cost them close to $1 billion in revenue,” writes Mark Bulgutch. In response, Sheridan College announced it was stopping all new enrolment in 40 programs and will reduce staff by 30 per cent.

These are days of doom and gloom at Ontario’s universities and colleges. You don’t have to have a PhD to know why. The federal government has woken up to the fact that there are too many people in the country who are here “temporarily.”

That includes international students. There are more than a million of them in Canada right now, which according to some, has put a great deal of strain on the country’s ability to house all of us and look after our medical needs.

Ottawa’s solution was to issue only 364,000 study permits this year, a decrease of 35 per cent from 2023. Some analysts say the decrease will be about 50 per cent when all is said and done.

Ontario has more schools than any other province, so naturally this province took the biggest hit. The Council of Ontario Universities says losing international students, who pay tuition fees up to five times higher than Canadian students, could cost them close to $1 billion in revenue.

St. Lawrence College in Kingston has eliminated 30 administrative and support positions and warned of further job cuts. Mohawk College in Hamilton says 200 to 400 layoffs are coming very soon. Sheridan College is stopping all new enrolment in 40 programs and says it will reduce staff by 30 per cent.

All of this is bad news. But what I find remarkable about the frenzy to deal with the apocalypse is that it was all foreseeable. In fact, it was foreseen. And no one did anything about it.

An advocacy group called One Voice used the Freedom of Information Act to unearth, “internal government documents,” warning that, “international student tuition has been increasingly supporting the financial sustainability of post-secondary education institutions.”

But who needed some internal secret document to figure that out? The 2022 report of Ontario’s auditor-general, which is freely available, was released with the usual fanfare, and was covered extensively in the media, said this: “Relying heavily on international student fees makes universities more susceptible to steep and sudden drops in revenue that could result when global circumstances and federal immigration policies change, and international student intake declines.”

It could not have been said more clearly.

In the movies, when some scientist discovers that an asteroid is going to collide with our planet and destroy us all, the powers-that-be spring into action, and figure out how to prevent disaster.

In real life, either no one read the auditor-general’s report, or everyone concluded it was best to keep taking in all that foreign money today and worry about tomorrow only after the asteroid hits.

We could blame the universities and colleges, but it’s hard to do that. They were hungry for foreign tuition money because the Ontario government doesn’t support them nearly enough.

Last year, a panel of experts appointed by the government itself noted that provinces outside Ontario provide universities an average of $20,772 per full-time student. Ontario coughs up $11,471. To catch up — that is to be just average — would require spending another $7 billion a year. Ontario has responded by promising $1.3 billion over three years.

The Colleges and Universities minister called that an “historic investment.” She also told the schools they were stuck with a tuition freeze first imposed in 2019 for at least three more years.

Most people would be hard pressed to come up with the name of the auditor general of Ontario. People who dig into the government’s books are not superheroes. They’re just public servants in a relatively small department (total budget — $26,194,700) who report on whether taxpayers are getting value for their money.

That 2022 auditor general’s report by Bonnie Lysyk concluded that the government of Ontario had, “no clear strategy or long-term vision for the post-secondary sector.”

It appears the auditor general’s report was worthy of an A-plus.

Mark Bulgutch is the former senior executive producer of CBC News.

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/canadas-international-student-crisis-was-predicted-and-ignored/article_e1053504-b64c-11ef-a2cb-1b51cc331aec.html?source=newsletter&utm_content=a10&utm_source=ts_nl&utm_medium=email&utm_email=0C810E7AE4E7C3CEB3816076F6F9881B&utm_campaign=top_6461

Tags: budget, housing, ideology, immigration, jurisdiction

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