Quebec Immigration Minister Jean-François Roberge tabled a bill on Thursday to reduce the number of international students, after reports of some private colleges mainly serving as channels to obtain citizenship.

At a news conference in Quebec City Thursday, Roberge alluded to an unnamed private trade school that allegedly saw its enrolment of international students jump by 1,392 per cent between January 2023 and May 2024.

"It is as if teaching is no longer a social mission, an economic mission, but a business model to sell Quebec and Canadian citizenship to people," Roberge said.

Bill 74, titled "An Act Mainly to Improve the Regulatory Scheme Governing International Students," would amend Quebec's immigration law to give education and higher education ministers more leeway in restricting foreign students' entry.

The bill would have foreign students' ability to enrol at certain colleges and universities be determined based on certain criteria, including region, programs, language, cohort size, labour needs and "government priorities."

The latest data from Statistics Canada suggests that as of Sept. 30, 2023, Quebec had just over 588,000 non-permanent residents, including nearly 124,000 study permit holders — 80 per cent of which are enrolled at post-secondary institutions, Roberge said.

"120,000 [international students] is too much," he said at a news conference in Quebec City on Thursday, noting that the bill would give the government new levers to obtain "more information" before approving applications.

The 12-page bill does not contain a cap on the number of international students who may move to the province, but Roberge said there would certainly be fewer of them.

Currently, international students must obtain a Certificat d'acceptation du Québec before receiving a study permit from the province.

"We really want to preserve programs in the regions," Roberge said. "I know very well that several programs are sometimes kept alive in the regions thanks to the presence of international students."

Roberge noted he hopes the bill is adopted this fall so that it can be implemented by September 2025.

Christian Blanchette, rector of Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, worries Bill 74 could infringe on universities' autonomy by allowing the government to prioritize certain programs.

He said a recent rise in international student enrolment at the university has been "mostly in niches where worker shortages was felt in our region."

Some fields, he said, may not appear trendy or relevant to the government immediately — as was the case of neural network research 30 years ago — but they could become key to societal transformation.

The immigration minister said he can understand why English-language institutions would be worried but insisted that the government wouldn't target specific schools.

Last year, the Coalition Avenir Québec government capped the number of students who can enrol in the province's junior colleges to counter the supposed "decline of the French language."

The move was part of the government's changes to the Charter of the French Language, commonly known as Bill 96.

Vannina Maestracci, a spokesperson for Concordia University, said in an email on Thursday that the rise in international student enrolment is largely at francophone universities, "in part due to government funding granted for international recruitment which anglophone universities do not receive" and tuition increases for out-of-province and international students attending English-language universities.

Concordia has seen a 15.9 per cent drop in international students this year compared to a 0.9 per cent decrease in 2023, according to a preliminary report from the Bureau de coopération universitaire published in September.

"Now that the bill has been tabled, we hope that the government will consult with universities and consider each specific situation," Maestracci said.

McGill University institutional communications director Michel Proulx said in a statement Thursday afternoon that international students help attract businesses to Quebec and strengthen the province's "competitive position in the knowledge economy."

"As Minister Roberge recognized in his press conference today, international students are a vital asset for Quebec," the statement reads. "The unique experiences and background they bring to our universities enrich the learning environment for all students, including Quebecers."

The proposed legislation is part of an attempt to curb the amount of non-permanent residents in Quebec as the provincial government wrestles with Ottawa over the arrival of a growing number of asylum seekers.

Premier François Legault had asked Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last March for total powers over the amount of immigrants it receives, citing 160,000 asylum seekers currently in the province, but the premier was shut down.

In August, Legault also announced a six-month freeze for new temporary foreign workers coming to work low-wage jobs in the Montreal area.

While in Paris last week, Legault said relocating asylum seekers to other provinces should be "mandatory" and that it is "up to the federal government to manage that."

He said that 160,000 asylum seekers are currently in Quebec, although federal government data suggests there are 96,021.

"Right now, everything that's being suggested by the Quebec government is on a voluntary basis for asylum seekers and on a voluntary basis for other provinces," Legault said. "What I want is for there to be results."

On Wednesday, Legault told reporters that paying asylum seekers to move elsewhere or cutting their financial assistance "isn't something we're considering."

Federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller told reporters on Thursday that compared to Ontario and B.C., Quebec has been "relatively responsible" in managing its volume of international students, but the province has "equal challenges on the number of asylum seekers in certain institutions."

"We've said that we will work with [Legault] on making sure that the integrity of their education system is preserved," Miller said.