May 2, 2024
Starting this fall, international students can work a maximum of 24 hours a week off campus, down from the current 40 hours during the school year.
Immigration Minister Marc Miller said the federal government will restore the weekly work-hour ceiling, which was lifted during the pandemic to allow international students to ease Canada’s labour shortage and reduce the financial burden that students faced amid the rising costs of living.
“It was a successful measure in helping our economy recover from the pandemic and is therefore no longer necessary,” Miller told reporters during a scrum Monday. “To be clear, the purpose of the international student program is to study and not to work.”
The ability to work off campus has become an important incentive for international students to study in Canada because they can work to offset education costs and sometimes acquire the work experience needed toward their possible permanent residence.
In the last decade, international enrolment in Canada has tripled to more than 900,000 students last year. Canadian employers have grown accustomed to having the students to fill jobs in low-wage fast-food joints, retail, warehouses, factories and gig work.
While the 24-hour weekly work restriction is preferable to the 20 hours pre-pandemic because now students can take up three full shifts each week, activist Jaspreet Singh said this could be a problem for those who work in the major warehouses. That’s because many of these employers have introduced four-day work weeks and each shift is 10 hours.
“The 20-hour (limit) was a problem because employers don’t usually offer a half-shift, and students didn’t want to break the law by working a third full shift,” said the president of the International Sikh Student Association, adding that most study permit holders would have preferred a 30-hour weekly work rule.
Before the pandemic, international students could only work for up to 20 hours a week off campus. After the limit was lifted, said Miller, more than 80 per cent of students worked over 20 hours, and slightly raising that limit by four hours will allow them to reasonably work three eight-hour shifts a week.
“Increasing working hours while studying at post-secondary institutions can lead to declining academic performance and increase the risk that students will drop out of the programs,” he explained. “We need to support international students and make sure they are set up for success.”
Facing public pushback over high levels of immigration and criticism over the impact on affordable housing, the Trudeau government has been under tremendous pressure to restrict the number of temporary residents in Canada, and international students and postgraduation work permit holders make up a chunk of that population.
Like many Canadians, some students have struggled financially as a result of skyrocketing rents and living costs, looking for extra work hours. Some have turned to community food banks for support.
Since becoming immigration minister, Miller has made a series of changes to rein in the exponential growth of the international education program, including imposing a two-year cap on the number of study permits issued to each province.
“It would have been unduly burdensome to reduce it to 20 hours or even more,” Miller said. “Students that want to come here have to realize that they can only work 24 hours, right, in order to offset some of their costs or bring the material resources themselves.”
He said the restoration of the work-hour limit won’t affect most students who are now at the end of their academic year because they are already allowed to work unlimited hours during school breaks.
However, Sarom Rho, an organizer of the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, the work restrictions should be lifted completely to guarantee full labour rights.
“Today’s decision means employers will continue to get away with mistreating international students who have no choice but to do undocumented work past 24 hours, simply to make ends meet and pay for skyrocketing tuition,” said Rho.
