Manitoba 'collateral damage' under Ottawa's international student cap, minister says

Manitoba's minister of advanced education and training says Ottawa's countrywide cap of international students for post-secondary institutions has hurt the province.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada previously said it's expecting to approve 291,914 international study permits across the country — 28 per cent fewer than the 404,668 permits issued in 2023.

Under the new changes, Manitoba is projected to see its number of international students drop from 10,155 last year to 9,140.

"It's unfortunate that we, in some ways, were a bit of collateral damage in the federal government using a very blunt tool to apply a policy nationwide, [when] we really didn't have the same sort of circumstances as in every province," Advanced Education and Training Minister Renée Cable told CBC News in an interview Monday.

"We want international students here. We want to open the doors for them, but we'll continue to work with the federal government to make sure that that system is as sustainable as possible."

The federal government has largely blamed the private sector for a spike in the number of international students, though data obtained by CBC News shows public institutions account for the largest share of the growth.

Study permits issued are projected to drop by 41 per cent in Ontario and 18 per cent in B.C. under the cap, but are also expected to rise by 10 per cent in Saskatchewan, Quebec and Alberta.

Cable says the changes also include a new cap on the number of students who receive a provincial attestation letter, which confirms Manitoba's approval for a student to attend one of the province's post-secondary institutions but does not mean a guaranteed spot.

"There's often a difference between the number of letters of offer that go out and the number of folks who are accepted," she said.

"The federal government came in and said they are both going to cap the number of letters and the number of people who can come."

Ottawa initially set a cap of about 15,000 attestation letters for Manitoba, but Cable says the province was able to negotiate for that to be increased to about 18,500.

The province said it received just under 21,000 international student applications in 2023. The final acceptance rate, determined by IRCC, was about half.

While the federal government sets the cap of international students, it's up to the province to decide how many students each designated school can receive.

"I am very hopeful that when this all shakes out … it would be in a very comparable situation to what we were in in 2023," Cable said.