An economics professor interviewed by the CBC claimed that the state broadcaster apologized to him for trying to get him to blame provinces instead of the federal Liberals for the pending economic fallout that colleges are about to face.
After years of encouraging colleges and universities to accept as many international students as they can attract, the Trudeau government has finally implemented caps on the annual number of student visas and study permits issued. (However, the cap remains quite high.)
In the aftermath of the announcement, several post-secondary institutions are claiming that they will have to lay off a significant portion of their staff, following years of reaping three to six times the tuition fees that they charge domestic students.
After speaking to the issue in an interview with the CBC, economics professor Mikal Skuterud reported that the host, Hallie Cotnam, attempted to shift blame onto colleges and universities for exploiting policies that the Trudeau government had previously encouraged them to take advantage of.
When Skuterud refused to shift the blame from the federal to the provincial level, the host ended the interview.
“Disappointing interview on CBC Ottawa this morning. Host was determined to push me into a corner to say that responsibility for unsustainable growth in foreign students lays with provinces, not Feds. Interview ended abruptly when I refused,” Skuterud said.
The Waterloo University professor said he was most disappointed with CBC given that they agreed with him before the interview that they wouldn’t push him on the “blame game.”
Skuterud continued, “But if we’re going to play ‘blame game’ @HallieCBC here are the facts,” before relaying the policy changes the Trudeau government introduced six years ago.
In 2018, he said, the Trudeau Government expanded the Student Partners Program (SPP) and renamed it the Student Direct Stream (SDS) with the aim of making it easier for foreigners to get study permits.
Then in 2019, the feds changed their International Education Strategy, which Skuterud said “dropped all mention of (the) goal of attracting and retaining the ‘best and brightest’ and shifted to prioritizing growth by ‘diversifying foreign students’ fields, levels, and locations of study.’”
Last week, Skuterud was invited to a committee meeting in the House of Commons discussing immigration, where he told members that he warned the federal Liberals in 2016 not to allow too many foreign students in two-year college programs, where they often end up ditching their program before it starts, and claiming asylum.
The CBC, which receives $1.4 billion annually in taxpayer dollars, has long been accused of acting as a propaganda outlet for the Trudeau government, especially after Opposition leader Pierre Poilievre stated that he would defund it if elected.
