By: Surjit Singh Flora
(Samajweekly) Canada’s is facing an unprecedented housing crisis that is being fueled, in part, by record, unrestricted international students converging on our universities, colleges, and other vocational colleges, all with insufficient facilities to house these students while reporting record profits driven by international student enrollment.
Canada has seen a threefold increase in the number of foreign students in less than ten years, reaching over eight million. They pay five times more fees than Canadian students on average. This money funds educational institutions. Foreign students often use college admission as a way to obtain permanent residence (PR) in the country. This has resulted in accusations of profiteering by private colleges and immigration consultants. Numerous colleges are being opened, some of which are in temporary buildings. Despite the risks of fraud, high visa fees, and challenging living conditions in Canada, the number of visa applicants continues to rise.
International education contributes $22 billion to Canada’s economy each year. Visa priority is given to students from qualifying institutions. Critics argue that the education sector is bringing in too many international students to Canada, straining the housing and labour markets.
In Brampton where I live, neighbourhoods are seeing more and more single-family homes being bought up by landlords who are converting them into dormitories, providing cramped accommodation for sometimes 10 to 15 students in homes with one kitchen, inadequate bath or shower facilities and at a cost that can range from $700 to $900 per bed. These residences are unregulated, overcrowded, and in increasing numbers, are taking much needed houses out of the resale market. The growing lack of supply is a contributing factor to driving the cost of housing up while providing inadequate and in some cases, unsafe housing for students with few to no other housing options.
To complicate an already difficult situation, there have been allegations of fraud involving forged admission offers provided to students applying to Canadian universities, colleges and vocational colleges. Many Indian students, particularly from Punjab, are facing deportation from Canada in the same year due to fake college admission papers. Starting this month, Canada’s Immigration Department will implement a new system for issuing study permits to counter these fake admission documents. The revised system will involve the department verifying admission letters directly, allowing prospective students to receive verified, authentic documents.
In the latest issue said to be causing even more strain on an already strained international student system, allegations of student fraud involving misleading financial statements have been widely circulating. The federal government requires international students to provide proof of funds to finance their living and meal expenses while studying in Canada. However, rumours of fraud are circulating involving students who borrow money to show they meet funding requirements, but who must return the money after their applications are approved leaving themselves little or no funds to fund their housing and meals while studying here. While their student visa allows them to work to support themselves, recent developments may indicate these rumours of application fraud to be true. On November 9 of this year, the food bank operated by the St. Louise Outreach Centre in Brampton banned international students from receiving donated food from their food bank in response to the additional demand for support from the students that the centre cannot meet. While other shelters have criticized the decision, they do admit that numbers of international students as clients of the various food banks are on the rise and are an emerging issue of concern. In addition, international students’ reliance for food from Brampton’s free Sikh Gurdwaras is also on the increase.
It is clear this situation is a crisis that needs to be addressed. The number of international students exceeds our capacity to house, and while universities, colleges and particularly vocational colleges have scaled up their capacity to accept an ever-growing number of students, these growing numbers of students far exceed the capacity in our communities that is required to safely and ethically house and provide for these vulnerable people. They are being egregiously taken advantage of, and our federal government needs to step in the restore order to an important element of our education system that is in a state of chaos with wide ranging and serious ramifications to the students, and the cities in which they are settling.
