Ontario universities, which have experienced funding cuts and a tuition freeze, will be subject to the new study permit cap in 2026.
Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne tabled the Liberal government’s 2025 budget on Nov. 4, and the House of Commons passed it on Nov. 17. One line item in the budget set off alarm bells: the new cap on international study permits: 155,000 per year starting in 2026, followed by an additional 5,000-permit cut in both 2027 and 2028. Altogether, it amounts to a 49 per cent drop from the 2025 target of 305,900 study permits.
The federal government’s framed the cap as a response to system-wide pressures, including housing, healthcare, and infrastructure. “We’re taking back control over the immigration system,” Budget 2025 reads, pointing to a rise in temporary residents from 3.3 per cent of Canada’s population in 2018 to 7.5 per cent in 2024.
In an interview with the Journal, Stauffer Dunning fellow at Queen’s School of Policy Studies, adjunct professor and former political staffer, Don Drummond, in charge of budget making under former Prime Minister Paul Martin, said the blanket cuts to study permits are a misdirected response to the Trudeau Government’s immigration policies.
He argues that cracking down on private colleges would’ve been more effective.
“The student visa program went totally out of control and was subject to enormous abuse,” Drummond continued, “but almost all of the abuses came from private colleges […] almost none of it came from [public] Universities.”
Drummond highlighted that reports from the Auditor General of Ontario found that many international students enrolled in private colleges didn’t attend class, and that private colleges were creating programs solely to collect tuition fees from international students.
Further criticizing the permit reduction decision, Drummond suggested that the government didn’t understand the context around study permits before implementing the cuts, pointing to the fact that universities are already under financial strain and pressure from previous provincial and federal policies. The Council of Ontario Universities is projecting a $265 million operating deficit in 2025-26, and it’s predicted to grow in the coming years.
“It’s a failure to understand the broader context of the problem, and they’ve just made it way worse for no gain,” he said. “It could’ve been easily and appropriately addressed otherwise without affecting the University so broadly.”
At Queen’s, international undergraduate students pay between $50,000 and $60,000 per year, subsidizing institutional operations, and according to Queen’s 2025-26 Budget Report, 10 per cent of the University’s revenue is derived from international student fees.
For now, some relief has come in the form of an exemption for international graduate students from the permit cap, a move welcomed by U15 Canada, an association of various research universities in Canada, including Queen’s. In a Nov. 5 press release, U15 CEO Robert Asselin said the exemption signals Canada’s commitment to attracting top research talent from around the world.
“Today’s decision to exempt graduate students from permit caps is an important step towards rebuilding Canada’s immigration system in a sustainable manner, focused on attracting top talent and leveraging our reputation as a global destination for excellence,” Asselin added.
Still, the broader cap is expected to impact undergraduate programs. According to the 2025 Annual Report to Parliament on Immigration, the number of international students entering Canada fell by over 40 per cent from 2023 to 2024. The cap will further shrink the intake, cutting it to less than a third of 2023 levels of 496,175 new permits.
Drummond warned that these cuts will further strain the University’s finances and that it could lead to larger classes, fewer instructors, and weaker educational outcomes. He explained that institutions might turn to hiring instructors at low cost to teach large lecture courses, but that can have a negative learning outcome for students.
“Employers are looking for writing skills, collaboration, and problem-solving. You don’t get that in a 400-person lecture hall,” Drummond said.
Despite the permit cuts, Queen’s is ramping up international recruitment, with senior delegates recently returning from the Asia-Pacific to strengthen global ties, attract more students, and explore new partnerships and academic opportunities.
Tags
2025 Budget, federal budget, Federal Budget 2025, Finance Minister, Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne
All final editorial decisions are made by the Editor(s) in Chief and/or the Managing Editor. Authors should not be contacted, targeted, or harassed under any circumstances. If you have any grievances with this article, please direct your comments to journal_editors@ams.queensu.ca.