The hidden effects of low taxes - Keith Roulston editorial

Universities and colleges across Canada came back to life last week as thousands of students enrolled for the coming year. Down the road at the University of Western Ontario, 40,000 students moved in.

But the enrollment is a mixed blessing, writes columnist Konrad Yakabuski in the Globe and Mail. Mine was the leading edge of the Baby Boom when I enrolled in Ryerson Polytechnical Institute in 1966. There, we then had about 3,500 students. Today the school, (now Toronto Metropolitan University) has 44,000 undergraduate and another 2,950 graduate students studying for post-graduate degrees. Other universities and colleges have grown as well as the Baby Boom passed through. 

But the boom went bust. The Baby Boomers grew older and our children, too, grew older. Ours was the first generation that had the pill available for our entire reproductive lives. Women were educated and wanted to make use of that education so they had fewer children.

On the other hand, education was a bigger part of our lives than it was for our parents. I was the first in my family to get a university degree. Three of four of my kids got degrees and post-graduate degrees as well. My grandchildren are collecting degrees and post-graduate degrees.

And so the universities and colleges that grew to educate the Baby Boomers kept going, and got used to more people getting a post-secondary education, but, as families had fewer children, suddenly schools found themselves with surplus spaces. At the same time, provincial governments got spending-conscious and began to cut funding back.

How could the universities cope? According to Yakabuski, the number of foreign students in Canada with active study permits soared to 807,750 last year, a 31 per cent increase from 2021, though publicly-funded universities and colleges accounted for less than half of the total of those aforementioned students.  

Foreign students pay tuition fees as much as 10 times higher than domestic ones. Capping foreign student visas could drive some institutions over the financial cliff, while forcing others to dramatically slash capital projects and investments in research.
Meanwhile, I have a niece living in Australia because she didn’t qualify for university in Canada because we created such high demands for entrance, but she could qualify as a foreign student in Australia. She is about to marry an Australian and Canada will have lost her skills forever. Another daughter of a family friend has also become an Australian, as have many other young Canadian students.

But there is a further complication. Canada is facing a housing crisis with people unable to pay the rents demanded by some landlords. Working people are living in their cars and elsewhere. Federal Housing Minister Sean Fraser suggested Ottawa may consider limiting the “explosive growth” in foreign student visas, which many experts say has contributed to Canada’s housing affordability crisis. This, Yakabuski says, is giving indigestion to college and university administrators.

Then there’s another issue. The truth is, Yakabuski points out, a big proportion of international student visa holders who arrive here to attend universities spend more time working than studying. Indeed, as immigration minister, earlier this year, Fraser lifted the 20-hour-per-week work limit for international students, providing proof, if any was needed, that the foreign student visa program is also a temporary foreign worker program aimed at helping desperate employers fill low-paying service-sector jobs. Capping visas for these students would leave hundreds of employers in the lurch.

As for colleges and universities, a sudden reduction in the number of foreign students they are allowed to accept would have disastrous financial consequences. Provincial funding has been stagnant for years, while a freeze on tuition fees for domestic students in Ontario has forced institutions to turn to international enrollees to make up for the shortfall.

So the growth of foreign enrollment in Canadian universities and colleges is far more complicated than it at first seems. The low support from our governments means Canadian students are turned away and go elsewhere to get their education, often meeting and marrying their life partners. We accept hundreds of thousands of foreign students who pay much higher tuition and often work at low-wage jobs to pay the bills. And those nearly one million foreign students need somewhere to stay, driving demand for housing higher than some full-time Canadians can afford to pay.

Most of us just want low taxes so we can spend our money on travel and luxuries. We can’t see how that demand on our governments contributes to a chain of events that leads us to gain some residents, and lose others.