Canada's 'student trafficking' industry is backfiring on Trudeau

Canada’s radical immigration experiment, which has given it one of the world’s fastest rates of population growth, has run into big trouble in the ring of suburbs and small cities around Toronto.

A post-pandemic surge of international students is causing prices for rental housing to soar and placing a spotlight on the uncontrolled growth of colleges that, according to the government’s own immigration minister, are taking advantage of vulnerable young people with inferior academic programs. Much of the blame is falling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who oversaw a tripling in the number of foreign students to more than one million. Today, about one in 40 people in the country is on a foreign-study visa.

Now, the government has been forced to scale back its immigration ambitions, an acknowledgement that a system once touted as a key driver of economic growth isn’t working. Faltering in polls because of frustration about housing costs, Trudeau is cracking down: Immigration Minister Marc Miller has announced a temporary limit to the number of student visas and is promising further measures soon. The goal is to gain more control over the influx of students and force the market to weed out shoddy programs by slowing the spigot of international tuition fees.

“People are being exploited,” Miller said in an interview with Bloomberg.