Immigration Cuts Are Hurting Education in Small Communities

In a darkened room at Coast Mountain College, two lifeless forms lie motionless, as if awaiting resuscitation.

Titilope Kunkel flips a switch and fluorescent light fills the room, illuminating two dummies. One is clad in a floral bathrobe and the other in a grey wig. They occupy two beds in a classroom set up as a hospital ward. Today the room is quiet. Soon it will be filled with students tending to their mock patients.

Coast Mountain College’s Smithers campus has been running its health-care assistant program for almost six years. Through the pandemic and ongoing health-care worker shortage, the program has provided staff for local hospitals and is a prerequisite for the college’s nursing programs.

It’s just one example of how the college is responding directly to local needs.

“We're working to meet the particular employment needs of the communities we serve,” says Kunkel, the college’s vice-president of academic, students and international.

“We’ve been fortunate,” Kunkel adds. “With international students, we’ve been able to run more programs.”

But sweeping changes over the past year and a half to Canada’s immigration and international student policies are now putting some programs — at Coast Mountain College and many others across rural and remote areas of B.C. — at risk.

Since January 2024, the federal government has reduced the number of post-secondary students entering Canada by more than a third and restricted work opportunities for graduates.

Now, some B.C. colleges that have come to rely on tuition from international students are projecting massive budget shortfalls, planning layoffs and reducing programming.

The changes are hitting colleges the hardest, particularly in rural communities with small satellite campuses, where some fear post-secondary education may disappear altogether.

Across the province, a handful of colleges have campuses in rural and remote communities — places like Hazelton, Haida Gwaii, Mackenzie, Quesnel, Trail and Nakusp.

The satellite campuses provide local access to higher education for people who cannot easily relocate, such as mature students with families. Colleges can also offer a bridge from high school to university through partnership agreements with other institutions.

And in the midst of affordability and housing crises, they allow students to remain at home for at least a portion of their post-secondary education.

As these institutions begin to founder, governments don’t appear poised to step in.

B.C.’s recent budget showed no notable funding increase for post-secondary education, and the issue is getting little attention at the federal level, with candidates in the upcoming election focused on threats from the United States.

When Liberal Leader Mark Carney was asked about immigration policy on March 23, he pledged to support the caps implemented by his predecessor, Justin Trudeau, saying Canada had “not lived up to the bargain” with international students by ensuring sufficient housing and quality education.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has also said he would extend the caps, telling far-right media personality Jordan Peterson that Canada needed to “end the fraud” of the international student and temporary foreign worker programs.

For international students, a college education in a smaller B.C. community offers a lower cost of living while pursuing a pathway to immigration. The students are also filling seats in rural classrooms, allowing programs to run that may otherwise not have had sufficient numbers.

As the federal changes threaten some college programming, advocates say no one in Ottawa is consulting small communities and rural post-secondary institutions.

How we got here

In recent decades, immigration and post-secondary education have become intricately linked.

Canada has welcomed international students as far back as the 1950s. But while accepting foreign students was initially seen as a humanitarian activity, by the early 1990s, it had shifted to a money-making endeavour, says Lisa Brunner, a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of British Columbia’s Centre for Migration Studies who also teaches in the department of educational studies.

“People describe this as a move from aid to trade,” Brunner says. “International students’ access to higher education became like an export industry.”

The increased recruitment of international students coincided with a reduction in public funding for higher education, she says. Canada increasingly relied on international students — who now pay three to four times the tuition of their domestic counterparts — to subsidize post-secondary education and create a pool of potential economic immigrants.

“Our message to international students and graduates is simple: we don’t just want you to study here, we want you to stay here,” former federal immigration minister Marco Mendicino posted in January 2021.

There was “an unusually intense period of growth among temporary residents” in 2022 and 2023, Brunner says, in response to the pandemic’s influence on the labour market.

By late 2023, Canada had more than one million international students — almost as many as the United States, despite the U.S. population being more than eight times that of Canada.

But Canada soon changed its tune. Citing pressure on housing, health care and other services, the federal government promised in January 2024 that it would decrease study permit approvals by 35 per cent.

It also restricted post-graduation work permits for students graduating from certificate or diploma programs to specific fields of study, such as agriculture, education, health care, and science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The restrictions, which don’t apply to university graduates, were meant to “better align with immigration goals and labour market needs,” the federal government said.

Just three years after his government had invited international students to “study here [and] stay here,” Trudeau blamed “bad actors like fake colleges” for exploiting the immigration system.

“Far too many colleges and universities used international students to raise their bottom line,” Trudeau said.

While it’s true that Canada had not prepared to increase international student numbers by expanding infrastructure and social services, causing a strain, Brunner says the federal government’s response was “absolutely political.”

“The cohort of students that heard that message in 2021 are now the students that are graduating and are being told that ‘oh, there’s too many,’” she says. “They are really, really struggling, because they were expecting to immigrate to Canada, and now they don’t know if they’re going to be able to.”

‘We can’t recruit our way into filling these gaps’

In B.C., the Cariboo and northern regions have seen the largest rate of growth, with the number of international students nearly four times what it was a decade ago, according to a report released by the province in January.

International students now account for almost 30 per cent of post-secondary enrolment in the North/Cariboo region, the province’s data shows, surpassed only by 32 per cent in the Lower Mainland.

Coralee Oakes, who spent more than a decade representing B.C.’s Prince George-North Cariboo riding in the legislature, serving as shadow minister for post-secondary education in the years leading up to last fall’s election, describes post-secondary institutions as “the hub of the wheel” for small communities struggling with everything from health care to jobs to mental health and addiction.

Having a College of New Caledonia satellite campus in her hometown of Quesnel has been integral to sustaining local health care, she says.

“If we didn’t have the health-care training at our local college, we wouldn’t have a hospital that’s functioning,” she says. “We can’t recruit our way into filling these gaps.”

The Northern Health Authority, which covers the northern two-thirds of B.C., partners with several local colleges to provide paid work experience for students in health-care programs. Many remain in the community where they did their training after graduation, Oakes says.

In an email, Northern Health said it had hired at least 124 registered nurses, psychiatric nurses and licensed practical nurses straight out of school last year, with newly graduated nurses accounting for about 30 per cent of all new hires. (The health authority doesn’t track specific post-secondary institutions, a spokesperson added.)

But the College of New Caledonia, which is based in Prince George but has a half-dozen campuses throughout north-central B.C., has been hit hard by immigration changes.

After announcing in 2023 that it would offer a licensed practical nursing program at its Quesnel and Burns Lake campuses, the college reversed that decision last spring, instead moving the program to Prince George. It blamed low enrolment for the relocation.

It has not commented on layoffs but posted a statement in January saying it would suspend some of its programs, blaming “recent changes announced by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.”

The Tyee spoke with former College of New Caledonia staff members who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals against their work. They believe the college’s smaller satellite campuses are at risk of disappearing altogether, given extensive layoffs and cuts to programming.

The McLeod Lake Indian Band issued a letter in February criticizing layoffs at the Mackenzie campus and saying it was “gravely concerned” about drawing post-secondary resources away from rural communities.

The college did not make anyone available in response to The Tyee’s interview request.

‘Top-down changes’ don’t consider rural needs

In addition to fears about losing access to post-secondary education in smaller communities, local representatives told The Tyee that the labour force priorities identified by the federal government don’t necessarily reflect those of rural economies.

In December, Public and Private Workers of Canada, or PPWC, a union representing support staff at Selkirk College in B.C.’s southern Interior, wrote letters urging federal and provincial ministers to consider local needs when making changes to post-graduation work permits.

“The sectors identified by Ottawa as ‘high demand’ simply do not align with the reality of our region,” PPWC national president Geoff Dawe wrote, adding that the “top-down changes” don’t consider the value of international students or the vital role the college plays in the community.

The federal government’s focus on things like agriculture, education, health care and STEM doesn’t necessarily align with a region that relies heavily on tourism, hospitality and the service industry.

The union didn’t receive a response to its letter, Dawe says. He says governments need to be clear on how they plan to support struggling colleges.

“We need to make sure that our rural communities stay strong, viable, economical places to raise kids and grow,” Dawe told The Tyee in an interview. “People are going to go to different communities or bigger cities where they will offer these programs.”

Selkirk posted an update in February saying it expects a 60 to 85 per cent reduction in international students over the next two years, which is projected to reduce annual revenue by up to $9 million. Most affected is the college’s school of hospitality and tourism, which provides staff for the local service industry.

The college has already suspended some programming, says PPWC Local 26 president Rod Fayant, who grew up in the Kootenays and has worked at Selkirk College’s Trail campus for nearly 30 years.

Fayant called for better consultation between the federal and provincial governments on labour market needs, adding that colleges are “more in tune with what is happening locally.”

“What is happening in Ontario doesn’t necessarily reflect what's needed here,” he says.

No help for higher ed in recent BC budget

B.C. hasn’t been quick to offer financial support for colleges facing revenue shortages.

In a mandate letter issued in January, B.C. Premier David Eby directed Anne Kang, minister of post-secondary education and future skills, to work with post-secondary institutions to “advocate federally” for funding and support schools to identify “new revenue streams and cost reductions.”

The Federation of Post-Secondary Educators of BC responded to last month’s budget saying it was “disappointed” it didn’t address the current funding crisis.

“The provincial government encouraged and enabled international student recruitment as a way of backfilling a lack of public funding,” Brent Calvert, the federation’s president, wrote. “That policy has now ended in failure, and we need a plan to address the effect on communities across the province.”

The Tyee made multiple requests to interview Kang. The ministry declined, saying the minister’s schedule is “fully booked out.”

A spokesperson instead provided a statement, which says, in part, “Our government continues to work closely with [post-secondary institutions] and support them through these changes, while advocating to the federal government for a change that reflects a made-in-B.C. solution.”

Prince George Chamber of Commerce executive director Neil Godbout says he’s disappointed with the province’s lack of support.

“This is an issue that’s 20 years in the making,” Godbout says about post-secondary expansion and tuition caps under former BC Liberal premier Gordon Campbell in the mid-2000s.

“It really forced post-secondary institutions to look at other sources of revenue, and the low-hanging fruit for so many years was international students,” he says.

In October, Godbout joined the leadership of several other chambers in the region — Vanderhoof, Quesnel and Mackenzie, communities affected by College of New Caledonia cutbacks — in issuing a joint statement saying the immigration cut causes “harm to the regional economy and unfairly targets the College of New Caledonia.”

Colleges are depending on ‘pennies in the couch’ for survival

Praveen Kashyap, a graduate of Coast Mountain College’s business program, is also a college employee.

When Kashyap came to Smithers from Haryana, northern India, to study in 2018, he was among a cohort primarily made up of students from South Asia. He chose rural B.C. for the chance to experience small-town life.

As a student, Kashyap was permitted to work 20 hours a week. He picked up night shifts at the local 7-Eleven, eventually moving up to manager. After graduation, he qualified for a work permit and, a year later, obtained permanent residence before landing a job with his alma mater. He’s now applying for citizenship.

“It wasn’t easy,” he says. “But it wasn’t impossible.”

But that has changed, he says.

As an admissions officer for Coast Mountain College, Kashyap is frequently in contact with others seeking a similar path. But he can’t advise them to follow in his particular footsteps — business administration grads are no longer eligible for post-graduation work permits.

“You have less chance of working after you graduate,” he says.

Instead, he directs prospective international students to programs such as health care and trades, which still qualify for post-graduation work permits under the federal government’s new rules.

As a result of the business administration program’s ineligibility for post-graduation work permits, its enrolment has dropped significantly. The college will be suspending it next month, Kunkel says, despite its benefits for Smithers.

“The local businesses love our business administration students,” Kunkel says. “They contribute a lot to the community.”

Overall, international student numbers at Coast Mountain College are half what they were last semester, she says. The changes require the college to remain nimble, constantly adjusting to decisions made thousands of kilometres away in Ottawa. While Coast Mountain isn’t planning immediate cutbacks, they could happen in the coming fiscal year, Kunkel says.

In the meantime, the college will “look for the pennies in the couch” just to maintain existing programming, she says.

“There's so many voices where the federal government can hear, directly or indirectly, from institutions across the country,” she says. “If the mandate [to bring in international students] changes, then everything changes for us.”