Ontario’s Minister of Colleges and Universities says her government is still “running numbers” to see the impact a federal cap on the number of international students allowed in the province will have.
Speaking to Global News briefly at the Rural Ontario Municipal Association Conference in Toronto, Jill Dunlop said meetings with post-secondary institutions in Ontario are ongoing.
On Monday, Immigration Minister Marc Miller announced a national cap on the number of international students entering the country. He said a slew of changes would reduce intake to the country by 35 per cent in 2024.
The cap will be at a national level but rolled out provincially, Miller said. He said the places with the most “unsustainable growth” would see the biggest cuts.
“In the spirit of fairness, we are also allocating the cap space by province based on population,” Miller added.
How those changes will impact Ontario remains unclear.
“We’re looking at those scenarios, running numbers on that, working closely with the sector to see the impact that’s going to have,” Dunlop said.
Asked if she was concerned universities or colleges could financially struggle after the cap, Dunlop said she was “concerned about the labour shortage.”
Dunlop did not say if the Ford government will increase funding to colleges and universities as international tuition dries up.
“We’ll take the announcement today and take that into further consideration,” she said, referencing recommendations made by an expert panel to the government.
A spokesperson for Dunlop’s office later said “some bad actors” were taking advantage of the system. The spokesperson said Ontario and the federal government had been “engaging” over ways to crack down on misuse of the system.
— with files from Global News’ Uday Rana