Quebec claims private colleges are selling citizenship. The data tells another story

Many permits have gone to people attending schools outside Montreal, in regions where the province has promised not to target programs that largely depend on foreign students.

Quebec wants to cut its share of international students to ease housing pressure and protect the French language, but a recent uptick in study permits has mostly gone to people from francophone countries where the province has explicitly sought to attract more students.

Many of those permits have gone to people attending schools outside Montreal, in regions where the government has promised not to target programs that largely depend on foreign students.

Immigration Minister Jean-François Roberge tabled a bill earlier this month that would give the government broad discretion to cap the number of international students based on region, institution and program of study. The government could also take language into account.

Roberge said the number of foreign students in Quebec has increased by 140 per cent, from 50,000 in 2014 to 120,000 last year, a number he said is “too many.” He suggested some private colleges are using education as “a business model to sell Quebec and Canadian citizenship” and pointed to two — without naming them — that have seen a manifold increase in international student enrolment in the last two years.

But federal and provincial numbers paint a different picture. They show a sharp increase in international students at public and government-subsidized private colleges and francophone universities that aligns with government policy. Enrolment at unsubsidized private colleges, meanwhile, has cratered.

“If we try to understand why there has been an increase in our network, it’s because our colleges responded to the government’s call to recruit more in French-speaking countries, and in particular (for) Quebec’s regions,” said Patrick Bérubé, CEO of the Quebec association of private subsidized colleges.

“We are currently trying to understand exactly what problem the government is trying to solve with this bill.”

The federal government issued about 61,000 study permits to foreign students at post-secondary institutions in Quebec in 2023, up from 51,000 the year before. The increase in permits went almost entirely to students from French-speaking countries, mostly in North and West Africa.