BU president addresses student visa cap with board

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This article was published 29/01/2024 (599 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Brandon University has quickly put together a committee in response to the incoming international student visa cap.

BU president David Docherty presented to the BU Board of Governors meeting on Saturday via ZOOM that the Manitoba Government is “moving quickly” in response of the federal plan to cut international student visas in 2024 and 2025 by 35 per cent across Canada.

Docherty told the board the NDP government has requested details of the current international student programs at BU and they will submit their data to the province by March 31. BU has more than 500 international students this year.

Federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller announced earlier this week that the cap is a temporary move over the next two years to hopefully address a national low-income housing crisis caused in part by incoming international students, and intended to cut back on “unscrupulous” private schools that are offering “sham” degrees and taking advantage of foreign students.

In 2022, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada stated there were 807,000 student visa holders in Canada — half of that number was in Ontario alone in 2022. Miller said earlier this year that Immigration predicted that number would be higher than 900,000 in 2023.

Docherty explained to the board he thought this was specifically aimed at private colleges and not public universities regulated by the provincial government and accredited with Universities Canada. He said about a third of the country’s universities fall under this category, while the remaining two thirds are private colleges and what they lack compared to the public universities, like Brandon University, is support beyond education.

“They don’t have residences, they don’t have student services, they don’t provide recreational facilities, mental health facilities, those kinds of things that we all think of as being necessary for university. And that is part of the problem,” Docherty told the board … The federal government has called them ‘puppy mills.’ I think that’s a little bit harsh. But I do think that the students’ quality of education, and the quality of student experience, that is facing students in the unregulated colleges is very different than what we’re able to do as a public university.”

Docherty said he didn’t have too many other details and didn’t want to speculate about what will happen with international students coming to Brandon, but he is sure the bulk of the federal problem is not here. The BU president described the situation as more of an Ontario and British Columbia problem.

“I am not an expert enough to tell you how much of the housing crisis in Canada is driven by international students, I can tell you that it’s not driving a housing crisis in Manitoba.”

With files from the Brandon Sun.

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