Throne Speech reconfirms cap on international student permits

In the Speech from the Throne delivered by King Charles III, the federal government pledged to limit the number of international students in Canada, in the interest of “restoring balance to the [immigration] system.”

 “The government will set a limit on the number of temporary foreign workers and international students, establishing a cap starting in 2027 that will be below five percent of Canada’s population,” the Speech from the Throne stated. “At the same time, it will attract the best talent in the world to build the economy.”

The Speech from the Throne, whose purpose is to communicate the direction and agenda of the government, also serves to formally open Canada’s forty-fifth Parliament under Prime Minister Mark Carney. While touching on many topics, including the economy, defense, trade, Indigenous rights, protection of nature, border controls, gun laws and international relations, the speech had little to say regarding higher education. However, in the context of creating a new industrial strategy, the Throne Speech promised “to build hundreds of thousands of good careers in the trades and … make Canada a science and innovation hub.”

The speech outlined the government’s plan to ease the housing crisis by incentivizing a made-in-Canada modular housing industry and by giving tax breaks to first-time home buyers. Although it did not speak explicitly of alleviating costs for renters, many of whom are students, it did promise to cut municipal development charges for new multi-unit housing, which could potentially lower rents.

Last week, Carney released his first official mandate letter to Cabinet, outlining a list of seven priorities. Although higher education was not mentioned explicitly, the goal of “attracting the best talent in the world to help build our economy, while returning overall immigration rates to sustainable levels” was named as the sixth priority.

According to Statistics Canada, there are currently about 1.5 million temporary foreign workers and 944,000 international students (some of whom also hold work permits) in Canada. When family members are factored in, the total number of people residing in the country on work and study permits amounts to just over 2.5 million, or approximately 6.2 per cent of the total population.

During the recent election campaign, Carney said that caps on international study permits imposed by the previous Liberal government would remain unchanged. The Carney government plans to issue 437,000 new study permits and extensions in 2025, down from 485,000 in 2024.

On the campaign trail, the Liberals also proposed a plan that would allocate $2 billion (in partnership with provinces) to develop new student housing. They also promised to invest $100 million in the Canadian Sovereignty and Resilience Fund to attract professors and graduate students whose funding is being cut in the United States.

This is the first time since 1977 that the reigning monarch has read the Speech from the Throne. Generally, the Governor General reads the speech as the representative of the Crown. King Charles’s visit is widely seen as a symbolic rebuke of U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats to annex Canada to the United States and as an assertion of Canada’s existence as a distinct sovereign nation.