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Justice Minister Sean Fraser says he should’ve placed a cap on international students when he served as immigration minister, following a recent auditor general report that found incidents of fraud in the program.
“With the benefit of hindsight, I would have liked to actually change the program fundamentally and say the federal government is placing a cap on this, and letting provinces allocate their share of the cap to different institutions,” Fraser told CBC News on March 25.
Fraser, who served as immigration minister from 2021 to 2023, said the federal government had negotiated on immigration programs with the provinces in “good faith.” He said those negotiations had failed, which led to the Liberal government introducing a cap in January 2024.
Months after Marc Miller took over as immigration minister in July 2023, the immigration department announced a two-year intake cap on the number of international student applications, from 560,000 student visas issued in 2023 to roughly 360,000 for 2024.
In September 2024, Ottawa announced it would further limit the number of international students entering Canada in 2025 by reducing the target number of new study permits issued, from 485,000 to 437,000.
Auditor General Karen Hogan released a report this week that found the immigration department failed to verify whether study permit holders were complying with the terms of their permits, and out of over 153,000 cases flagged in 2023 and 2024 only 4,057 were investigated.
The department also did not track which international students were expected to leave Canada each year, or which ones had already left. A total of 93 percent of the 549,000 individuals whose study permits expired in 2024 were allowed to remain in Canada, according to the report.
The report also found the department approved fewer than half of the forecasted number of new post-secondary study permits, with the reduction disproportionately impacting smaller provinces.
In response to the report, Immigration Minister Lena Diab said that the department accepted the auditor general’s recommendations and thanked the office for its audit. She said that while international students benefit Canada, the system needs to be “sustainable, credible and well managed.”
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre called for Fraser, Miller, and Diab to be “fired” following the release of the auditor general’s report. In a March 24 letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney, Poilievre said the three ministers needed to resign for their “disastrous management of our immigration system.”
Poilievre again raised the issue during question period on March 25, asking whether the ministers would be dismissed. Carney responded that he is “blessed with a strong cabinet that is working hard for a strong Canada.”
Carney added that asylum claims in Canada has fallen by one-third and the number of international students has declined by 70 percent, which he said is evidence that the Liberal government is “regaining control of the immigration system.”
