Sector leaders have said they are “encouraged” by the report’s proposals, but the more pertinent issue now relates to how IRCC acts on the report and whether it can lead to meaningful policy reforms – something stakeholders warn is “extremely urgent”.
The report feeds back on a series of parliamentary hearings last year. It covers the period since January 2024 when the government first announced its study permit caps – kicking off a slew of policy changes, including restrictions on off-campus working hours, narrowed pathways to post-graduation work permits (PGWP) and reduced opportunities to permanent residency, to name a few.
While the government continues to pursue its goal of reducing temporary migration to less than 5% of the population by the end of 2027, critics say international students have unfairly become a proxy for broader societal anxieties around immigration.
“This isn’t solely an immigration issue,” urged the Canadian Bureau of International Education (CBIE) in its parliamentary testimony. “Talent development and attraction cuts across departments and needs whole-of-government coordination.”
CBIE president Larissa Bezo said one of the report’s recommendations was a “direct response” to the Bureau’s advice and would see IRCC help fund a centre for excellence to compile all levels of government data and promote policy innovation across international education.
Given the wide disparities in labour market needs across Canada, Bezo welcomed the committee’s advice to allow provinces and territories to define labour market gaps in the PGWP program – something the sector has long called for.
This recommendation links to broader issues around the lack of consultation and coordination between federal and provincial governments, which the report urges the government to ameliorate.
In Canada, responsibility for immigration lies with the federal government, while provincial governments have oversight over education. In recent years, provinces have repeatedly called on Ottawa for increased transparency and coordinated policies.
As such: “The lack of a durable, cross-sectoral strategy has left international students caught between federal immigration goals and provincial higher-education financing decisions,” Lisa Brunner, research associate at UBC Centre for Migration Studies, told The PIE News.
“Without a renewed international education strategy that meaningfully involves provinces and institutions, IRCC risks continuing to govern this space reactively,” she warned.
The international student program cannot be stabilised while higher education is structurally dependent on an exploitative and unjust international tuition model
Lisa Brunner, UBC Centre for Migration Studies
Meanwhile, both experts hailed the importance of the recommendation to publish “clear plain-language program rules and expectations”, as Bezo emphasised the “vacuum of information” during the rollout of recent policy changes which widespread uncertainty for students.
“Transparency is essential for ethical recruitment,” added Brunner, explaining the current crisis did not only stem from ‘bad actors’ but from a misleading and exploitative system in which incentives, messaging and past policies strongly implied a ‘study-work-stay’ pathway that was never equally available.
Elsewhere, Brunner said the report’s recommendation of stronger oversight and accountability for DLIs was “critical”, highlighting its recognition “that immigration controls alone cannot address problems created within the education system”.
“Particularly where recruitment practices, curriculum licensing, and institutional funding models incentivised highly marketised, and thus unsustainable, growth.”
While stakeholders have welcomed most of the report’s advice, Brunner said the proposal to introduce country-based caps tied to asylum claims or overstays risked racialisation and diverting attention from the deeper structural causes.
What’s more, she raised concerns that the Committee hadn’t seriously reckoned with post-secondary funding models warning. “Without public investment, stronger regulation alone will not prevent institutions from reverting to risky international recruitment strategies,” she said.
Coming just weeks after the Auditor General’s findings, the report adds to the extensive body of evidence calling for immediate reforms to Canada’s ISP, with Bezo confirming that IRCC was already beginning to work through the recommendations”.
Brunner welcomed the fact the report had cross-party engagement and agreed it would “probably impact incremental policy change”.
But she raised doubts about it producing the structural reform that she and other witnesses called for during the hearings, highlighting that it largely accepts the post-2024 rest as its starting point, rather than questioning whether the extent and pace of the caps and other policies were an “overcorrection” – as many stakeholders believe.
As such: “The report is more likely to shape how the current system is managed than the more ethical and innovative system that is actually needed,” said Brunner.
And while IRCC has demonstrated it can move quickly when political pressure is high, she warned the agency was operating in a “highly polarised environment”, raising concerns that measures to prevent fraud and reduce volume were crowding out policy expertise, student well-being and long-term labour market planning.
“Canada is currently facing a paradox of its own making,” Brunner emphasised.
“International student numbers are falling faster than intended, institutions are experiencing real financial distress, and yet public discourse continues to frame students primarily as a problem rather than as participants in a system the state actively designed.”
She highlighted that rebalancing “does not mean returning to unchecked growth”, but warned that without recalibration, the sector risked “cycling between boom‑and‑bust crises that undermine both immigration legitimacy and educational quality”.
