EDITORIAL – Why putting a cap on international students a bad idea

An editorial by Mel Rothenburger.

OF ALL THE BAD IDEAS for increasing housing, telling foreign students to stay out of Canada might be the worst.

“I think that’s one of the options that we ought to consider,” says Sean Fraser, the federal Housing, Infrastructure and Communities minister.

Of course, international students wouldn’t be banned altogether, but caps would be put on their numbers under the theory that if there were fewer of them, there would be more housing available for Canadians.

This is a classic case of cutting off our nose to spite our face.

Aside from being a major — I mean major — source of revenue for Canadian universities and, to a lesser degree, school districts, international students enrich our communities immeasurably through cultural diversity.

That includes Kamloops and Thompson Rivers University. Each semester, some 4,000 international students from more than 100 countries attend TRU. They pay four times as much for tuition as domestic students.

While the number of domestic students has been declining, the number of international students has been rising. International students indirectly subsidize local students, so one can imagine the impact on tuition costs for locals if the numbers of foreign students were curbed. Not to mention the impact on the local economy.

TRU didn’t get back to me on how many international students stay in off-campus market housing but it’s safe to assume a lot of them live in student dorms and make no impact on the local housing situation.

Certainly, the housing issue is serious and something has to be done. It’s no surprise it was high on the agenda for Liberal cabinet ministers as they caucused this week.
But the idea of putting tight quotas on the number of international students shouldn’t be anywhere on the list. By his comments yesterday, it sounds as though Prime Minister Trudeau is walking back the idea of a cap.

Community leaders need to tell him he must make that a firm commitment.
I’m Mel Rothenburger, the Armchair Mayor.

Mel Rothenburger is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. He has served as mayor of Kamloops, school board chair and TNRD director, and is a retired daily newspaper editor. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.