Canada needs better security checks for international students, critics say
John Paul Tasker | CBC News | Posted: October 3, 2024 8:00 AM | Last Updated: October 3
International students are not required to produce a police certificate when coming to Canada
International students are not required to get police certificates from law enforcement in their home countries before coming to Canada — something critics say needs to change.
People applying for permanent residency, citizenship or International Experience Canada (commonly known as the working holiday visa) are required to produce such police certificates, which give Canadian officials early warning of an applicant's possible criminal history in their country of origin.
But Canadian visa officers don't necessarily have access to police-drafted documents when deciding whether to admit an international student.
A spokesperson for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) told CBC News that all officials screen "applications from all over the world for inadmissibility in order to maintain the security of Canadians."
Immigration officials work with law enforcement partners like the RCMP to "carry out a comprehensive security screening to help identify those who might pose a threat to Canadians," the spokesperson said.
That screening process "may" involve a criminal history check, or require students to submit biometrics like fingerprints and photos, the spokesperson added.
That's not enough, said P.E.I. Sen. Percy Downe, who previously served as chief of staff to former Liberal prime minister Jean Chrétien.
He's become an advocate for more stringent security checks since an international student working at an office supply store in Charlottetown sexually assaulted a local woman.
Downe maintains that all international students should be required to provide a police certificate so Canada can avoid inadvertently admitting someone with a criminal past.
Officials shouldn't simply request police certificates on a "case-by-case" basis, he said, because that could allow bad actors to slip through the cracks, especially when the IRCC is dealing with such a high volume of would-be students.
"We need to make sure that everybody coming in, regardless of where in the world they're coming from, is subjected to some sort of security check. We don't need to import any more criminals. We have enough of our own," Downe told CBC News.
"We need to make sure the people coming are not only safe for Canadians here but also for the other international students — they also want a safe environment."
The number of international students with active study permits in Canada rose to 1,040,985 in 2023, a 195 per cent increase over the 352,305 who were here in 2015 when the Liberal government was first elected, according to IRCC data.
While the government said last fall it would tighten admissability rules for international students, numbers tabled in Parliament show the number of people here on study permits actually increased to 1,073,435 as of May 31.
The federal government has since said it will put limits on the program but IRCC is still planning to issue about 485,000 new study permits for this academic year and 437,000 for the next.
International students are a major economic driver, providing hundreds of millions of dollars in tuition for the country's universities and colleges. Ottawa's recent move to rein in the number of international students has faced a lot of pushback from the institutions that depend on these newcomers.
The explosive growth in the number of international students has helped prop up colleges and universities that are facing a decline in domestic enrolment and dramatic provincial funding cuts.
WATCH: Universities, colleges say foreign student cuts could hurt Canada's reputation
Researchers from McGill University have said there's no strong evidence to suggest immigration causes crime rates to increase. International students are not classified by the federal government as "immigrants," although many do apply for permanent residency after their studies.
Statistics Canada, which maintains a database of police-reported crime, does not "collect any data relating to the citizenship" of alleged criminals, a spokesperson for the agency told CBC News.
The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) does have some data on how many foreign nationals, including international students, have been removed from this country because of criminal matters.
In 2023, 511 people were given a removal order (commonly known as deportation), according to data provided to CBC News. Of that number, 390 were removed for what the CBSA calls "serious" criminality.
The numbers are already higher this year, with 568 removals in the first nine months of 2024 — 418 of them for serious criminal acts.
Those figures give an incomplete picture because some criminally convicted foreign nationals are able to successfully appeal a removal order and remain in the country.
International students have been accused of carrying out some serious crimes in Canada.
An international student was accused of murdering six people — four children and two adults — in suburban Ottawa earlier this year.
In Sudbury, Ont., an international student pleaded guilty to manslaughter last year after killing a classmate over a marijuana-related dispute.
Sources have told CBC News one of the suspects accused of gunning down B.C. Sikh temple leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar was an international student.
Immigration Minister Marc Miller has said the foreign national accused last month of plotting a terror attack on Jewish sites in New York City was in Canada as an international student.
Two years ago, a UPEI international student pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a customer at a Charlottetown Staples store.
CBSA told CBC News it is investigating 285 current and former international students suspected of fraud for using phoney post-secondary acceptance letters to "take advantage of Canada's immigration system."
About 28 people, some of whom were involved in organized crime, have been removed or have left the country voluntarily as CBSA continues to investigates the fraud, the agency said.
Alberta Conservative MP Tom Kmiec is the party's immigration critic.
He said the Liberals have torpedoed the longstanding Canadian consensus that welcoming more newcomers is a good thing.
"The concern I hear the most, and it's one I share as an immigrant myself, is that the Liberals have undermined public confidence in the system," he told CBC News.
"We've got to make sure we know who these people are when they're entering the country and that nobody is being defrauded. A police background check — that should be part of the basics. I don't understand why the government wouldn't make it a mandatory step. It's common sense.
"Frankly, it's a privilege to come to Canada. We have an amazing country. At a minimum we should ask these students for a police record check, That's what Canadians expect."
Kmiec said it wouldn't be a burdensome requirement because the study permit application process is all digital.
"It's just uploading another PDF document. Extra information is never a bad thing, especially when you're protecting Canadians and residents who are already here from people who might have an ulterior motive," he said.
Dale McCartney is an assistant professor at the University of the Fraser Valley who studies the international student program.
He said it's reasonable to worry about crime but he questions whether the government can do much about it through police certificates.
"Practically speaking, I don't know if we can eliminate crime. If people are coming to Canada to possibly murder people — aren't those people going to lie? Aren't they going to manufacture the documents they need? Isn't that a relatively straightforward process? I doubt this would be super effective," he said in an interview.
That's the argument Miller himself made before a Commons committee last month.
"We rely on our security partners to advise us as to the risk profile to take with respect to these individuals," the minister told MPs.
"There are questions around the validity and the reliability of those certificates."
McCartney said there's also a risk these security checks could be unevenly applied and become corrupted by anti-Black and anti-South Asian racism and Islamophobia.
He also said international students face "a huge crisis of exploitation" because they tend to be unfamiliar with Canada. He said acts of abuse, assault and mistreatment targeting international students are "rampant. It's incredibly destructive and it's very hard to track down."
McCartney called for better settlement support programs for visiting students, like those offered to some asylum-seekers and refugees.
"Many international students don't know how to protect themselves because they don't have the local knowledge that many Canadians take for granted," he said. "Universities and colleges are not prepared for this at all."
There's extensive evidence of international students being victims of crimes, including abuse by fraudsters, blackmailers and criminally negligent landlords.
Some students have been targeted for prostitution and have been sexually assaulted.
There has been a surge in hate crimes in some places, most notably in Ontario's Waterloo region, which officials attribute to the increase in international students.
The Indian government is also raising red flags about the number of its citizens dying while in Canada.
More than 170 of them have died here over the last five years, according to India's external affairs department — a figure higher than the one reported in the U.S. and nearly triple the number of Indian student deaths in Australia and the U.K. in the same time period.