Around 800,000 worldwide students at present name Canada residence, with hundreds extra anticipated to include each new tutorial yr.
As students head again to college this fall, the main target is growing on whose accountability it is to house them, and what the rising numbers imply for Canada’s housing disaster.
Pressure is rising on the Liberal authorities to deal with the housing disaster, and several other federal ministers have hinted that the variety of worldwide students could possibly be capped sooner or later to ease housing demand.
“This is a tale as old as time, that immigrants are responsible for social crises; that immigrants and migrants are responsible for the housing shortage, which is simply not true,” stated Sarom Rho, an organizer for Migrant Workers Alliance for Change (MWAC).
Rho stated Canada has already seen {that a} cap on worldwide students wouldn’t work, as a result of it has already seen “something similar to a cap” through the COVID-19 disaster.
“In 2020 and 2021, we saw that very few migrants, including current and former international students, were coming to this country because the borders were closed. Yet housing prices continue to increase. In fact, they spiked drastically.”

Instead, Rho stated the emphasis needs to be on adequately housing students — each home and worldwide — as universities and faculties proceed to depend on the latter for a whole bunch of tens of millions of {dollars} every in tuition charges annually, and financial institution on that progress for his or her monetary futures.
“Colleges and universities and post-secondary institutions must do more to ensure that both international students and domestic students can access affordable housing, have protections at school, which include caps on the rate of fee increases and in-school supports. And a lot of this is denied to international students,” Rho stated.
Universities throughout Canada have pushed again towards the federal government’s suggestion of capping worldwide scholar consumption, and pointed to the necessity for extra funding to construct housing for students.
The University of Waterloo on Tuesday introduced that it was constructing a brand new, 500-mattress residence constructing on its foremost campus and it would open by the autumn of 2026. And in that announcement, the college’s president and vice-chancellor acknowledged the necessity amid the housing crunch.
“This investment is also a key contribution to continuing to grow the Region’s housing capacity, which is especially significant in light of the ongoing challenge of availability in our community and across the country,” Vivek Goel stated in a press launch.
A University of British Columbia spokesperson informed Global News it is additionally engaged on constructing extra scholar housing, and stated college representatives have informed Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada it doesn’t assist a cap on worldwide scholar consumption.
“With more than 15,000 beds across the Vancouver and Okanagan campuses, UBC is the largest student residence provider in Canada and plans to add another 4,800 beds (4300 at Vancouver and 500 at Okanagan) over the next 10-15 years at an estimated cost of $1.2 billion,” the spokesperson added.
Toronto Metropolitan University stated that whereas it doesn’t have any present plans to construct extra scholar housing, it was wanting to “explore more affordable methods” to construct extra housing capability.
But consultants say it nonetheless is not sufficient, particularly because the quantities being paid by worldwide students for most of the colleges proceed to develop.
“Ask a student in Brampton and they will tell you horror stories about how they are living. There are six or seven students living in underground basement apartments,” Bikram Singh, a member of the Brampton, Ont.-based advocacy group Naujawan Support Network (NSN), stated.
“They’re paying rent, paying tuition and having to face exploitative landlords,” he stated. “If they can’t give us housing or hostels for students, why are they charging us so much for an education?”

According to Statistics Canada, the gulf between home and worldwide charges is vital.
In the 2022-23 tutorial yr, the common home scholar in Canada paid $6,834 in tuition. By distinction, the common worldwide scholar paid almost six instances that quantity at $36,123.
A Global Affairs Canada report stated worldwide students in Canada spend $22.3 billion on tuition, lodging, and discretionary spending yearly. This is as well as to worldwide students being a serious supply of labour for Canada, which has confronted a extreme employee scarcity in recent times.
This pattern seems to be mirrored within the monetary statements of Canadian faculties.
What do monetary statements inform us?
In 2017-18, Canadore College in North Bay, Ont., made $12.25 million in tuition income from home students and $41.3 million from worldwide students. In 2022-23, home tuition income rose to $14.5 million and worldwide tuition skyrocketed to $131.5 million.
Canadore College didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Sheridan College, which has campuses throughout Ontario in Brampton, Mississauga and Oakville, has turn out to be the stuff of legend in Punjabi hip-hop music. Some of the preferred Punjabi hip-hop artists have referenced the “Sheridan life” of their songs and movies.
A spokesperson informed Global News Sheridan’s worldwide enrolment has risen by six per cent within the final 5 years and stated their 8,832 worldwide students is the bottom of Ontario’s 10 public faculties.
Between 2021-22 and 2022-23, Sheridan’s income from home students really dropped eight per cent, from $65.2 million to $57 million, in accordance to monetary statements. Meanwhile, income from worldwide students shot up 37.4 per cent, from $105.3 million to $142.7 million.
A spokesperson for Sheridan College informed Global News that their method to worldwide scholar consumption has been “slow” and “measured,” however hinted that this was obligatory due to dwindling authorities funding assist.
“Given the changes in government funding levels, this decision—while in keeping with Sheridan’s values and commitment to academic excellence—has had significant financial implications,” the spokesperson stated.
Seneca Polytechnic, based mostly in Toronto, attracts 80 per cent of its tuition income from worldwide tuition and 20 per cent from home students, in accordance to a spokesperson.
The faculty stated this was as a result of whereas the price of educating a home scholar is partially supported by authorities grants, worldwide scholar tuition should cowl your complete price of program supply.
This increase in students is occurring exterior Ontario too. For instance, over the previous decade, the variety of worldwide students in Quebec has doubled. As of December 2022, there have been 58,675 worldwide students at Quebec universities — a rise of 10,000 from the yr earlier than, after they accounted for 14 per cent of the entire scholar physique. Another 19,460 worldwide students research at public junior faculties and personal profession faculties.
Could universities and faculties construct extra?
Seneca has suite-type lodging for 1,330 students, and informed Global News the school can not construct extra with out funding from a number of ranges of presidency.
“Given the cost of constructing housing in the GTA, we cannot build affordable housing without a partnership with all three levels of government and the private sector to discuss solutions. Student housing is but one component of a much bigger issue of affordability across Canada,” a spokesperson for the school stated.

Fay Faraday, a regulation professor at Toronto’s Osgoode Hall Law School and immigration regulation skilled, stated that provincial “withdrawal and underfunding of public institutions, including post-secondary institutions, is what drives this cycle of increasingly needing to recruit students from outside of Canada.”
University of Toronto vice-president Joseph Wong stated in a latest message to members of that college neighborhood that “universities do not receive public funding for student housing, nor can they use tuition fees for this purpose.”
“But we think providing students with suitable housing options is so important that we have made a decision to assume debt to build these new residences,” he stated within the message. “We are working with government partners to identify and hopefully remove key barriers so we can build more residences even faster to support our students.”
Seneca Polytechnic informed Global News that, “From a financial perspective, operating grants to polytechnics and colleges in Ontario have not been increased for more than a decade.”
“Tuition was cut by 10 per cent four years ago and has remained frozen ever since. The system is on an unsustainable financial path without a fiscally responsible framework that allows us to deliver a high-quality education to all of our students.”
Sheridan College stated it is additionally working to guarantee students can get safe off-campus housing, corresponding to homestays, and is additionally connecting students to vetted landlords on Places4Students – a protected housing database for students.
The query that continues to be is what it will take to construct extra.
For Faraday, there could be no query that the blame assigned to worldwide students is misplaced.
“When we’re talking about international students, the focus should be on what do we need to do to ease their transition to permanent status and to ensure that they get permanent status and to protect them through their their educational and their work journey. That’s the conversation that we should be having, not blaming them for the fallout of provincial policies and legislation in other areas, for which they bear the brunt.”
— with information from The Canadian Press
International students pay sky-high fees. Whose job is it to house them?