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Budget proposes more than $1B for student and youth employment

Funds also promised for TMU med school, Inuit Nunangat University.

Hannah Liddle

November 04, 2025

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Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government proposes some investments in youth and students in its 2025 budget, which projects a $78 billion deficit for fiscal year 2025-26.

Amid the billions in proposed spending, the government has set aside more than $1.5 billion over the next three years for student and youth training and employment. The allocations proposed in the budget are:

$594.7 million over two years, beginning in 2026-27, for the Canada Summer Jobs program to support 100,000 jobs for youth.
$635.2 million over three years, starting in 2026-27, for the Student Work Placement Program to support around 55,000 work-integrated learning opportunities for post-secondary students.
$307.9 million over two years for the Youth Employment and Skills Strategy that provides hands-on experience and training to youth.

$40 million over two years will go to the launch of a Youth Climate Corps program, which will provide paid training to youth to quickly respond to climate emergencies, increase innovation and support adaptation and mitigation projects.
$1.2 million on Canada Student Grants and Loans in 2025-26. The government plans to limit access to the Canada Student Grant to domestic and international students attending public and not-for-profit private universities. Institutions will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. This measure, the budget reads, will result in savings of $1 billion over four years beginning in 2026-27.The government also plans to propose “legislative and regulatory amendments” to address integrity issues at private post-secondary institutions.

The budget also offers infrastructure support to two specific post-secondary institutions:

Toronto Metropolitan University’s Brampton campus and primary care teaching clinics in the surrounding communities will receive $25 million to support TMU’s new medical school.
Budget 2025 also announced support for Inuit Nunangat University, an institution that would be the first Inuit-owned and governed university in Canada’s Arctic but is not yet built. The project falls under the Build Communities Strong Fund, but it is unclear how much the government will allocate to it.

Budget 2025 includes the announcement that the government will slash international student permits by 49 per cent in 2026 from the 2025 targets. You can read more about the study permit announcement here.

Besides the measures for student and youth employment, the government has proposed a one-time initiative to attract international researchers. The budget includes the following investments to support that effort:

$1.7 billion over 13 years to attract 1000 highly qualified international researchers. That funding includes:
- About $1 billion for the granting agencies to launch a new Chair program for exceptional international researchers.
- $400 million over seven years to the Canada Foundation for Innovation to provide new research infrastructure and equipment to help Chairs conduct research in Canada
- $133.6 million over three years, beginning in 2026-27, to assist international doctoral students and post-doctoral fellows with coming to Canada

With files from Georgia Looman

Hannah Liddle

Hannah Liddle is the assistant editor for University Affairs.

1 Comments

Perhaps a dissenting view…..the allocation of money solely for foreign researchers is both an insult to Canadian researchers and damaging to the research ecosystem. To the first point, it assumes that Canadians cannot compete internationally if funded at the same level as the “stars”. This is demonstrably incorrect. Second, new programs divert funds from the 10s of 1000s of researchers already in Canada and whom have not seen meaningful increases (> Cost of Living) in basic research funding in decades. Similarly, the focus on PhD and PDF funds solely for foreign personnel, despite the frankly terrible state of scholarship for these groups in Canada (including last years budget), does little to help those who perform the *vast majority* of research in Canada. While I certainly see that there is an opportunity to attract researchers from specific locations (e.g., USA), I don’t think it should be at the expense of researchers already in Canada.

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