In a report today, auditor Karen Hogan criticised Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), consisting of the method it enforced a cap on the variety of trainees beginning in January 2024.
“We conclude that the department was not effectively carrying out reforms to the International Student Program,” she said.
In Canada, migration is a federal responsibility while the provinces run institution of higher learnings. This means that the two levels of government require to comply on files like global students.
However, Hogan said this hasn’t took place considering that the federal government announced that it would designate the number of study allows offered to each province.
“We surveyed provincial governments, which expressed basic dissatisfaction with the level of assessment on program reforms,” she reported. When the provinces were requested for their views, IRCC “supplied no feedback on how their input was considered.”
Even with limitations on the number of research study allows, many trainee areas went unfilled. “In 2024, the department approved less than half of the anticipated number of brand-new research study allows,” the research study discovered. “This continued in 2025 with just over 50,000 of the 255,000 anticipated number of brand-new research study allows approved by September.”
The auditor general regreted that IRCC did not understand why approval rates were lower than expected.
Higher education specialist Ken Steele believes he has the answer. He blames IRCC for signalling that international trainees are not invite in Canada. “Based on this report, IRCC handled to quash 83% of international interest in Canada as a research study location in simply 20 months,” he told The PIE News.
This auditor general’s report lights up the mayhem and clumsiness that dominated Ken Steele, college expert
“It’s obvious that IRCC needs to have made far more steady changes to tweak the circulation of worldwide students,” Steele argues. “This auditor general’s report illuminates the turmoil and clumsiness that dominated instead.”
International students are voting with their feet, Steele says. While Canada as soon as had a thriving global education sector, trainees are turning to more welcoming countries, such as Ireland and Japan.
The auditor discovered that smaller sized provinces were especially struck by low approval rates, consisting of Prince Edward Island, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador. “All were struck by a 59% or greater reduction in approvals in 2024 compared to 2023,” Hogan stated.
The study discovered that 153,000 students may not have been participating in school throughout 2023/24. Nevertheless, IRCC only had the resources to check out one% of these cases. Even these investigations were superficial. About 40% might not be finished because trainees did not respond to ask for more details. IRCC officials merely dropped the probes.
Designated Learning Institutions (DLIs) are required to submit trainee enrolment reports to the department. While the large majority complied, 50 stopped working to submit in 2025. These represented 10,000 trainees. The auditor basic mentioned that IRCC did not impose any repercussions on the delinquent DLIs.
While acknowledging some of the auditor-general’s issues, IRCC Minister Lena Metlege Diab asserted in a declaration: “The steps are working, but more can be done.”
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