International Students in Montréal: The Impact of Covid-19 and the PEQ Reform
Written by Brant Moscovitch
For all their differences, the two leading parties in Montréal’s 2021 municipal election agreed on one thing: that the city would benefit from attracting and retaining more international students. While Ensemble Montréal promoted Montréal as a “student city” and proposed tax credits to encourage graduates to stay, Mayor Valérie Plante has emphasised ensuring affordability and a high quality of life. The cultural and economic benefits of international students have been well documented, and include a measurable impact on local businesses, not to mention university revenue and campus diversity. Montréal faces a need for skilled workers, a serious debate about inclusivity and the integration of new immigrants, as well as a struggle to revitalize a downtown core battered by the pandemic. International students offer solutions, while examining the challenges and opportunities they face can provide us with nuanced ways to understand and address the points of friction points in immigrant life.
The pandemic has highlighted the fragility of international student life more than any recent phenomenon. As research by Concordia doctoral candidate Ezgi Ozyonum suggests, international students were already more prone to anxiety and depression before 2020; with the outbreak of Covid-19, existing systemic problems — including culture shock, isolation and lack of access to mental health resources — were compounded by acute financial stress and travel uncertainty, leading to a rise in suicides. Even in less tragic cases, students faced border closures, visa processing delays, and the substitution of traditional campus life with virtual classes. Up until the fall of 2021, entry into Canada from India, the largest source of international students in the country, was restricted due to concerns over the delta variant. While the stereotype of 21st century international study may conjure images of wealthy adolescents on an international “grand tour,” many families go into debt to send their children to Canada for the promise of a good education and, frequently, permanent residence. The added costs of unexpected travel and quarantines have increased financial burdens on students and their families. The pandemic’s ongoing toll has further highlighted the need for improved outcomes for international students and for the communities that receive them, including better integration into local communities and transitions from the classroom to the workforce that facilitate timely and lasting employment.
Montréal and the Competition for Student-Migrants
Since the 1990s, advancements in communications, growing wealth in developing countries like China and India, and the internationalization of education have led to an explosion in international study. In Canada alone, international study was worth an estimated $21.6 billion in 2018, with over 721,000 students filling nearly 170,000 jobs. Montreal specifically has also welcomed a growing number of international students, totalling 35,500 in 2018, an increase of 6.1% from 2017. As the phenomenon of international study expanded, promoted in part by universities hungry to make up reduced or inadequate public funding, governments and businesses became increasingly aware of the opportunities presented by this flow of future skilled workers.
This is especially true in OECD countries desperate to address aging populations, low birthrates, and skilled labour shortages. In the context of worldwide competition for skilled workers — which has only been accelerated by the pandemic — retaining international students and converting them into permanent residents has been prioritized in several countries. Despite policy fluctuations and government changes, it has remained important in Australia, the UK, France, Japan and Singapore [1][2], and it has been argued that convincing talented foreign students to stay in the U.S. should be seen as part of America’s geopolitical strategy to maintain a technological edge in the 21st century. For its part, since implementing the world’s first points-based immigration system in 1967, Canada has sought to increase the flow of skilled economic migrants and to streamline their applications for permanent residence. Over the years, retaining international students has come to feature prominently in this strategy. Canada’s most recent International Education Strategy (2019–24) has a budget of $147.9 million. Mindful of foreign competition, it outlines new scholarships to the tune of $5 million, the improvement of visa processing for students and PR applicants, and a desire to diversify source countries.
Until recently, Québec has pursued a similar goal, particularly by instituting its Programme de l’expérience québécoise (PEQ) in 2010. A year earlier, then-Premier Jean Charest had identified international students as part of the answer to Québec’s demographic challenges, highlighting as a problem the fact that only 10% remained in the province after graduation [3]. By 2017, the PEQ, which offered students a fast-tracked path to a Québec Selection Certificate (CSQ), was responsible for nearly one third of Québec’s new immigrants [4]. That same year saw the creation of I choose Montréal, an initiative of Montréal International designed to promote the city to prospective and current international students. It provides a valuable resource to students, facilitating links with employers and providing information about permanent residence. In 2017, QS named Montréal as the world’s best student city. Yet despite these developments, points of friction existed, and new challenges were about to emerge.
Immigration Reforms
In the global competition for talent, recent provincial immigration reforms may pose an even greater long-term detriment to attracting international students than the pandemic. The stated aims of reforming the PEQ, first proposed in October 2019, included both recalibrating the immigration system, which increasingly drew new migrants from the program, as well as ensuring that it adequately met labour market needs. The Legault government’s position was that the PEQ was a victim of its own success. It argued that the high number of PEQ applicants meant that it limited the number of immigrants selected from the Programme régulier des travailleurs qualifiés and Arrima, which are meant to respond specifically to workforce needs. This position, however, is dubious. Data suggests that the first cohorts of PEQ immigrants have performed well. Employment rates and income in particular are comparable to those of other economic immigrants admitted to Québec and of candidates for the Canadian Experience Program admitted outside the province, while accepted students have met the needs of Québec’s labour market [5].
The proposed reform’s first iteration was widely criticized for not exempting current students and for severely restricting the number of eligible degrees, leading to heartfelt protests in Québec and Montréal. In the words of one student, a Chinese national who came to Québec to study commercial drafting and had already bought a house in Châteauguay, students felt “abandoned.” In an interview with Radio-Canada, another student, Othman Khald, suggested that the proposal paid little attention to the financial hardship that students and their families had already endured on the assumption that they could apply for permanent residence: “On ne peut pas parler avec notre famille et leur dire qu’on a payé des milliers de dollars [pour nos études et que] maintenant, on est dans une situation pas possible.” Amidst fierce criticism, the government relented, reformulating the law that would eventually come into force in July 2020.
The final version of the PEQ relaxed restrictions on eligible disciplines and included transitional measures that allowed students who obtained a diploma by December 31, 2020 to apply under previous rules. Yet the reform still departs from the open spirit of the original PEQ. It requires 12–24 months of full-time work experience for students with PhDs, MAs, BAs, and technical DECs (depending on the program) to apply, a major change from the original requirement of a diploma alone. For those with a vocational diploma, 18 months of work are required. In addition, an applicant’s spouse must be able to demonstrate level 4 oral capability in French. Perhaps most importantly, processing time, which used to be approximately 20 days, has been increased to around 6 months. While transitional measures helped some students whose studies were interrupted by the pandemic or whose ability to travel was restricted, they have been insufficient for others.
The government’s general emphasis on work experience in Québec and French knowledge has merit, as both are indeed crucial to economic and cultural integration. When conceiving the reform, the CAQ could not have anticipated the sudden interruption to international mobility that 2020 would bring. Yet moving forward with the reform in the midst of the pandemic not only affected the plans of students who arrived beforehand, but also those preparing their arrival. International students and their families sometimes spend years preparing and budgeting for study abroad, and often choose locations in consideration of permanent residence options. For those who began a longer program (such as a PhD) in 2019 or had already prepared to apply to courses starting in 2020, there was inadequate time to plan and budget extra money. Moreover, the information that students receive about immigration rules can be conflicting or even inaccurate, a factor complicated by unregulated and sometimes unscrupulous local recruiters unaware of immigration changes and procedures, or indifferent to them. There was no reason why the government could not have proceeded in a more timely manner, one that balanced Québec’s immediate immigration concerns with a consideration of what international students, like all migrants, sacrifice in moving abroad, by phasing in the reforms over at least a 2–3-year period.
Ways Forward after the Crisis
It is still too early to measure the long-term impact of the new reform and the future of international study in Montréal, particularly in the context of the pandemic. Québec’s estimated loss of enrollment in 2020–2021 was around 9.4%, virtually all attributable to the pandemic and below the Canadian estimated average of close to 22%. Some experts remain positive about the future. UQAM economist (and a former international student from Gabon) Dieudonné Ella Oyono, for instance, remains optimistic, recently noting that despite the reforms, there is a strong will and infrastructure in place, including ongoing outreach efforts by Montréal International. Montréal’s world-class educational institutions, renowned researchers like AI specialist Yoshua Bengio, and reputation as a leading student city with a high quality of life will no doubt continue to attract students from abroad.
Nevertheless, it will face strong headwinds in doing so. As the emergence of multiple variants attests, periodic travel interruptions may persist for the foreseeable future, and future variants could continue to threaten vaccine efficacy. For all of Canada’s enthusiasm about international students, only 20–27% of those who intend to stay actually remain, with the number being even lower in Montréal. As Annick Germain and Mircea Vultur have shown, international study is often seen as a steppingstone into a life and career abroad rather than a final destination, a trend that the emerging hybrid work culture (including home and office work) may encourage further [6]. There is also reason to believe the reform is already having a negative impact. Some students who had planned to settle in Québec have changed their minds, fleeing for other provinces that offer shorter processing times. My own conversations with international student recruiters have revealed that prospective students commonly ask about immigration when considering where to study. The abrupt change in policy will almost certainly prompt future applicants to look elsewhere. It is telling that, after introducing restrictions to study-migration pathways, both Australia and the UK saw drops in international enrolment [2]. Doubts about immigration may be compounded by the negative international press Bill 21 received in 2019, an issue that continued to generate headlines abroad in 2021.
Despite these difficulties, there are reasons to be hopeful. While the shape of international study in a post-pandemic world is far from clear, recent disruptions (including 9/11 and the 2008 financial crisis) have been followed by swift recoveries and continued growth, a trend supported by initial data on the current situation. To spur this along, there should be more robust cooperation between universities, Montréal International, local business, and internship programs to offer students support. Universities and their students should maintain pressure on the government to keep the option of increasing immigration open. While unlikely, a policy reversal would not be without precedent. Although the British Conservative Party tightened student visa restrictions in the mid-2010s, the same party, albeit under different leadership, later shifted course and most recently sought to boost international student numbers and encourage post-study work and settlement. There should be additional recruitment and help offered to French-speaking African students, who have experienced disproportionate trouble acquiring visas from the Federal government. Moreover, there should be efforts made to recruit non-French speakers from India, China and elsewhere while providing them with information and subsidies to learn French. The idea of tax credits, proposed by Ensemble Montréal, should also be considered.
Most importantly, for the sake of the city and its students, stakeholders — from universities to city hall — must find creative ways to acknowledge neoliberal realities while pushing back against the complete commodification of higher education. There is a pressing need to balance, on the one hand, Montréal’s economic self-interest in a fiercely competitive global meritocracy with, on the other, an appreciation for what student-migrants leave behind and the challenges they face on campus and in their new city generally. If we are to recruit international students to support our universities and grow our economies, we must ensure they have the resources and time to integrate into and navigate a new culture. Indeed, both approaches must go hand in hand.
To begin with, the new work experience requirements should be re-examined, as they do not consider the barriers to work that some experience. It is well known that there are structural biases facing people from minority groups entering the labour market. For students from marginalized backgrounds, existing biases are compounded by a fluid pandemic situation and more stringent work requirements for the PEQ application. Instead of limiting immigration and creating new barriers, there should be increased resources and outreach to help students learn French, facilitate integration in cooperation with community actors, and fund research evaluating integration outcomes and proposing policy alterations when and if necessary. New scholarships and financial incentives should be created to encourage international students to both study and work in fields related to Montréal’s booming art and tech industries — with STEM and non-STEM candidates capable of contributing to AI, videogame design, aerospace, and multilingual communications. At the same time, we should not overlook non-STEM international students who have valuable perspectives to offer about immigration and integration. This could include, for instance, funding for students who write or make short films about the problems and opportunities of immigrant life, or artists who propose alternatives to the statues of John A. Macdonald or James McGill that represent the diversity of life in 21st century Montréal.
International students are younger than many other economic immigrants and spend years in their prospective home acquiring cultural and professional skills before applying for permanent residence. This makes them ideally suited to find rich lives in Montréal while contributing to the development of a more dynamic future for the city. We should do everything possible to encourage them to come and stay.
Works cited
[1] Hawthorne, L., “Demography, Migration and Demand for International Students,” in C. Findlay and W.G. Tierney (eds.) Globalisation and Tertiary Education in the Asia-Pacific: The Changing Nature of a Dynamic Market, Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 2010, p. 93–119.
[2] Hawthorne, L., “Global Demand for International Students as Skilled Migrants,” paper presented for the High-Skilled Immigration Policy and the Global Competition for Talent Meeting, Washington, D.C., 2014.
[3] Duclos, Virginie, “Les étudiants étrangers au Québec,” in Pierre Chenard et al. (eds.) L’accessibilité aux études postsecondaires: un projet inachevé. Québec: Presses de l’Université du Québec, 2013, p. 321–332.
[4] Beauregard, P.L., A.G. Gagnon, and J.D. Gagnon, “Managing Immigration in the Canadian Federation: The Case of Quebec,” in Y. Samy and H. Duncan (eds.) International Affairs and Canadian Migration Policy, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021, p. 227–45.
[5] Fleury, Charles, Danièle Bélanger, and Aline Lechaume, “Réformes de l’immigration au Québec en 2019 et 2020 : la logique politique à l’épreuve de l’analyse statistique,” Canadian Review of Sociology, August 2020.
[6] Germain, Annick and Mircea Vultur, “Entre mobilité et ancrage : les étudiants internationaux à l’INRS,” Institut national de la recherche scientifique, Centre — Urbanisation Culture Société, 2016.
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