Just a short one today, because I am spending my Sunday on a flight to Almaty and have less time than usual to blog.

Last month, I wrote “The Bill is Coming Due”.  It largely revolved around the theme that Canadian PSE institutions were too dependent on international students and that relatively minor failures in recruitment were now causing institutions real harm.  Also last month, I wrote about Ontario colleges and how they were killing the Golden Goose of international student income by being too greedy, bringing in too many international students without thought to local carrying capacity, effectively imposing what amounts to a tax on renters in local communities, and creating a great deal of ill-will in the process.

(Don’t anyone come at me with the “Ontario cutbacks left us with no choice” argument.  That was true five or six years ago maybe.  Since then, Ontario college revenues from international students far outstrip the losses from government.  I mean, good for them, from an entrepreneurial POV, but don’t pretend this hasn’t to a significant extent been about expansion and empire-building)

Want to know just how wild rental prices in the GTA these days?  According to data from Zumper.com, which tracks such things, between May 2021 to May 2023 new rental prices for a 1-bedroom apartment in Toronto, Mississauga and Brampton have all risen by 37-38%.  Other parts of the GTHA are not far behind.  Those numbers are enormous and terrifying – and, as I said, this is a cost borne by the whole community, not just international students.  And they are partly to do with the institutions admitting huge numbers of international students without the least worry about the local housing capacity for temporary residents.

While various colleges in the GTHA have some responsibility here, I would argue that the main responsibility here lies with institutions from outside the GTHA which have set up branch campuses in the area.  If a college like Centennial or Conestoga or Fanshawe adds international students, there is a feedback loop.  People complain to the mayor, who comes down on the college, or people make angry remarks to members of the Board, who live and work in the community.  But branch campuses?  No such feedback loop.  When a college in Northern Ontario signs a deal with a private college to deliver its programs at an “international campus” in Scarborough or North York or Mississauga, they face no such blow back – the local community has no real way to influence the decisions of institutions in Timmins or Sault Ste Marie or Sudbury or wherever.  It’s just pure negative externalities.

 In any event, as I said a few weeks ago, the bill is coming due.  And maybe it’s coming faster than everyone thinks.  On Friday, the Toronto Star put out a podcast on housing, the last few minutes of which include an interview with Immigration Minister Sean Fraser on the impacts of immigration on housing.  The interview starts at 58:10. It’s very interesting (Fraser is more thoughtful than the average Minister).  He dismisses the idea that high immigration numbers should impact our housing numbers, but then listen to what he says starting at about 1:00:25:

There is an issue, however which has me somewhat concerned in certain pockets across Canada.  There has been an explosion in certain temporary programs including the international student program in very specific communities in Canada that’s putting unique pressures.  I do think we need to work very closely with provincial govts which have jurisdiction over which institutions can select international students to come and take part in their programs of study and I do want to make sure that we continue to have a robust + successful international student program but we do have to continue to watch the currently uncapped version of temporary streams that allow people to come in unpredictable numbers to communities that may not be ready for that influx.  So, if you are asking me do my immigration levels give me consternation about housing challenges?  No, in fact I think it’s a big part of our housing challenges.  But is welcoming temporary residents in uncapped ways give me some concerns?  Some concerns, yes.  And I think we need to manage them properly in partnership with other levels of government who have some say in this conversation as well.

Y’all, if the federal Liberals are getting queasy about international student numbers, the game is nearly up.  The federal government can and very well may simply start to cut back on visa approvals.  They can and very well may simply stop (or at least limit) visa approvals for satellite campuses.  Or place limits on institutions in particular postal codes.  Or even – I don’t think it will get this far under a Liberal government but might under a future government – simply start reducing visa numbers on a national basis.

(Think the Ontario Conservatives will fight back?  Guess again.  That caucus is filled with 905-area MPPs whose constituents are screaming about rent.  If the Liberals look like seizing the housing issue from the Conservatives through measures like this, you can bet the Conservatives will fall in line pretty quickly).

There are a lot of Ontario colleges – and a couple of universities – who need to look very, very carefully at their contingency plans over the next few weeks.   It could get bad very quickly.  And as for the provincial government: well, if it doesn’t want a half-dozen more Laurentians on its hands, it might just want to review why exactly it’s only paying colleges per-student subsidies around 40% of what other provinces do.  That is, after all, the root cause of this fiasco.  

But the basic point is that the bill for our “let’s get foreign students to pay for our post-secondary education system” is coming due faster than anyone thought.  In fact, the bailiff is at the door.  Radical change might just be in the offing.