Canada's international student program blasted by auditor for failing to address 'integrity concerns'

The department began 4,057 investigations, but 41 per cent of these cases could not be closed because the students did not respond; another 50 cases were identified as non-compliant and requiring further follow-up.

“While there were some adjustments made to improve the integrity of the program, what’s concerning for me is that the department isn’t acting on the information that it has,” Auditor General Karen Hogan told a news conference.

“There are so many things that were raised by the department themselves, and then no follow-through.”

The international student program has been under close scrutiny since 2023, when borders reopened after the pandemic and international enrolment surged past one million. Runaway growth in the temporary resident population — including foreign workers and asylum seekers — was blamed for the affordable housing crisis, straining public resources such as health care and rising unemployment.

It prompted then prime minister Justin Trudeau’s government to cap the number of international student applications and reduce new study permits issued by 35 per cent in 2024 and another 10 per cent in 2025. New measures were also introduced to tighten eligibility for postgraduation work permits, address fraud and strengthen program integrity.

The audit findings, however, don’t appear to help boost public confidence in these reforms.

“There’s enough to still frighten people about what’s going on and question the integrity of our immigration system,” said York University Prof. Roopa Trilokekar, who focuses on government policy on international education.

The fast-growing international student program was the result of aggressive recruiting by the post-secondary education sector due to years of provincial underfunding and by unregulated foreign agents looking to profit from signing up students.

Under Ottawa’s two-step immigration pathways that favour applicants with Canadian education credentials and work experience, migrants increasingly look at studying in Canada as a back door to working and earning permanent residence here.

According to the audit, officials identified 800 approved study permits issued between 2018 and 2023 where applicants had either used fraudulent documentation or misrepresented information to gain entry to Canada. Most of them later applied for other immigration permits once in the country, and half have been approved.

“The absence of having a warning or something on their file to say fraudulent documentation or misrepresentation was used in the initial application means you weren’t able to then apply rigour on the second application,” Hogan cautioned.

In 2024, the department forecast approving 348,900 new study permits but 149,559 were approved, representing a 67 per cent drop from 2023, the report found. Last year, 255,360 approved new study permits were projected, but only 50,370 were approved by September.

The caps were meant to reduce international students in smaller provinces by about 10 per cent or less. However, Manitoba, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador and Saskatchewan all experienced a 59 per cent or greater decrease in approvals in 2024 compared with 2023.

Between December 2023 and September 2025, the Immigration Department used the new letter-of-acceptance verification system to process 97 per cent of more than 841,000 letters of acceptance submitted with study permit and extension applications, with the rest being manually processed. Ninety-four per cent of them were confirmed as genuine by the designated learning institutions.

The auditor general examined a representative sample of 51 applications flagged as potentially fraudulent to assess whether processing officers acted on the potential fraud indicated by the schools. It found that processing officers did not follow standard procedure in addressing the potential fraud before reaching their final decisions in 14 of the cases. Two of them were approved without follow-ups.

The audit also reviewed the status of the 549,000 people whose study permits expired in 2024; it found that 93 per cent of people were allowed to remain in Canada, managing to maintain legal status, and identified 39,500 people who should no longer be in the country. The Canada Border Services Agency confirmed about 40 per cent or 16,000 of these people had left.

In a statement, Immigration Minister Lena Metlege Diab said the audit only captured the first 18 months of a broader multi-year reform effort through 2027, hence it reflected just an early phase of implementation and not the full impact of the changes underway.

“We accept the Auditor General’s recommendations to strengthen follow-up where suspected fraud or non-compliance is identified,” Diab said. “We will act to improve these processes.”