Over the last five years, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has seen significant growth in its programs designed to welcome international students to Canada. This growth brings opportunities and challenges.

The House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration (the Committee) decided to study the recruitment and acceptance rates of foreign students in Quebec and in the rest of Canada, including francophone students from African countries. It wanted to understand the realities of increasing processing times and higher refusal rates and their impact on students and institutions, which is explored through testimony and data in Chapter 2.

This report discusses, in its first chapter, the important and growing responsibility for the federal government to attract, select and retain international students in relation to the responsibilities of the provinces and the Canadian designated learning institutions. It lays out the different programs and policies that frame international student mobility to Canada.

Chapter 3 explores the reasons given for refusals and explains potential causes for systemic differences in decisions by IRCC officials. Finally, the fourth chapter examines the opportunities presented by welcoming international students to Canada and the need to integrate and retain students after their studies. Overall, based on testimony from 31 witnesses and several briefs, the Committee makes 35 recommendations to IRCC and to the federal government, more broadly.