Study permit cuts hitting Surrey schools hard

Some Surrey schools are struggling financially after Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada reduced the number of new study permits in B.C. by 66 per cent.

Kwantlen Polytechnic University announced layoffs at the school as by fiscal year 2026, the university’s international student enrolment had fallen off a cliff by almost 4,500 from previous two years.

“We expect a further reduction of almost 1,000 international students by fiscal year 2027 (FY27),” Dr. Diane Purvey, the acting school president, wrote to KPU employees. “By FY27, estimated international student revenue is set to be down by $88 million from the FY24 budget. Domestic enrolment is expected to remain flat and is not sufficient to mitigate the international revenue decline.”

The University of the Fraser Valley is also predicting layoffs to staff.

According to the Auditor General of Canada, the reduction in new study permits disproportionately affected smaller provinces. The department also introduced a tool to strengthen application processing but did not effectively respond to other weaknesses in integrity controls, said the AG’s report.

After applications for study permits increased by 121 per cent between 2019 and 2023, the federal government announced a limit on study permit applications in January 2024.

“While the department’s implementation of these limits successfully reduced the number of new study permits issued, the combined effect of fewer applications and lower‑than‑projected approval rates led to a sharper decline than forecasted,” said the report.

In 2024, the department approved fewer than half the forecasted number of new study permits. This continued into 2025, with just over 50,000 of the 255,360 forecasted number of new study permits approved by September. The department did not know why approval rates were lower than projected.

Between 2023 and 2024, the department identified over 153,000 students as potentially non‑compliant with study permit conditions but had funding to investigate only 2,000 cases each year.

In 2023 and 2024, the department launched 4,057 investigations into students potentially not complying with study permit conditions. Approximately 40% of cases (over 1,600 students) were not closed because students did not respond to requests for more information.

“As part of the reforms, the department committed to strengthening the program’s integrity controls,” said the report. “The department successfully implemented a tool to verify the authenticity of school acceptance letters, an important step in processing study permit applications. However, we found weaknesses in how the department responded to suspected cases of study permit non‑compliance and immigration fraud. Addressing these issues promptly is important to make sure only genuine students are arriving in or remaining in Canada.”