New student visa rules will disproportionately harm colleges

Graduates are the foundation upon which economy has been built

Back in December, federal immigration minister Marc Miller warned that the federal government might have to step in to curb rising international student numbers and that, if it did, provinces and institutions “will not like the bluntness of the instruments that we use.”

Miller’s warning has proven salient. In January the federal government placed a cap on international student visas and limited access to postgraduate work permits (PGWPs). Colleges and universities understand the government’s motivation to act. But as is often the case with blunt instruments, their impact is not hitting every part of the higher education sector with equal force.

The new federal measures will disproportionately harm Ontario’s colleges at a time when their value to the economy is higher, and more crucial, than ever. And the pain will be felt in communities across the province.

Colleges serve a specific mission in Ontario’s higher education sector: they provide training and credentials for tradespeople and frontline workers who require specific qualifications. These include the electricians, carpenters, technicians and other construction trades Ontario needs to build housing for our growing population.

They also include the personal support workers who look after the province’s elderly, the early childhood educators who teach our youngest children, the practical nurses who alleviate the pressure on our health-care system, the police, firefighters and paramedics who provide first-response to emergencies, and the mentalhealth and addictions workers who support our most vulnerable.

Taken as a whole, these workers are the human foundation upon which Ontario’s economy and society have been built. And the reality is that our foundation is currently exhibiting deep stress fractures. We can all see and feel the pressures on the system: long wait times for health care, a lack of qualified daycare workers, insufficient elder care, increased drug addiction and homelessness.

What you’re actually seeing and feeling is a shortage of college graduates in the labour force. Currently, 25 per cent of all current job vacancies in Ontario require a college education. It’s expected that 36 per cent of new jobs created in the years ahead will require college credentials.

Ontario colleges have one job: to make sure those positions are filled. This is the primary reason why Ontario’s college sector has turned to international enrolment — to meet demand for those skills and shore up our social and economic foundation.

Amid all the rhetoric about “bad actors” and “diploma mills” looking to make a quick buck, Ontario’s colleges are doing nothing of the sort. They are pursuing their mission to produce quality graduates across all their campuses.

This is doubly true of Ontario’s rural and rural-urban hybrid colleges who primarily serve local workforce needs. Those colleges are located in smaller cities where populations are aging most quickly, with higher proportions of seniors than Ontario’s major metropolitan areas.

They need robust enrolment, both domestic and international, in order to re-balance the demographics of their local workforce.

Both Ottawa and Queen’s Park need to recognize, and reward, the unique role that colleges play as the backbone of our local and regional economies.

The provincial government can do that by reflecting it in the way international student spaces are distributed under the cap. The distribution of student visas must be driven by labour market needs, both provincially and regionally.

The federal government can do it through the extension of PGWP eligibility to all students in the specific college programs that meet our most pressing labour market needs.

There are other measures and amendments that would help ensure an appropriate balance in the application of new federal policies and the pursuit of the government’s goals.

As it stands, the blunt instrument approach risks doing more harm than good.

Currently, 25 per cent of all current job vacancies in Ontario require a college education