Canada’s recruitment of international students has tilted strongly toward filling spots in business programs, while doing little to meet the demand for workers in health care and the skilled trades, according to a CBC News analysis of federal data.
CBC obtained figures from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) showing the fields of education chosen by foreign students who received study permits from Ottawa to attend college or university in each year since 2018.Â
Experts say the figures demonstrate that neither federal nor provincial governments — nor Canadian colleges and universities themselves — focused international student recruitment squarely on filling the country’s most pressing labour needs.
“What we’re seeing with this data is that oversight was really lacking,” said Rupa Banerjee, an associate professor at Toronto Metropolitan University who holds the…
