The diplomatic tiff between Canada and India over the murder of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar has resulted in fewer students seeking study permits in Canada. The study permits issued to students from India have also dropped after India ejected Canadian diplomats who would process the permits, a top Canadian official told Reuters.
This comes as Canada Immigration Minister Marc Miller added in an interview that he believes the number of study permits for Indians is unlikely to rebound soon. "Our relationship with India has really halved our ability to process a lot of applications from India," Miller said.
"I can't tell you about how the diplomatic relationship will evolve, particularly if police were to lay charges," Miller said. "It's not something that I see any light at the end of the tunnel on."
This comes as diplomatic tensions erupted after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau publicly said that there was evidence connecting Indian government agents to the murder of Nijjar in British Columbia. India denied the allegations.
The issue has prompted Indian students to seek to study in other countries, a spokeswoman for Miller said. Those factors led to an 86% drop in study permits issued to Indians in the fourth quarter of last year from the previous quarter to 14,910 from 108,940, Reuters quoted official data.
C. Gurusubramanian, counsellor for the High Commission of India in Ottawa, told the news agency that some Indian international students were looking at other options besides Canada due to "concerns, in the recent past, regarding lack of residential and adequate teaching facilities" at some Canadian institutions. Many students were reportedly seeking colleges in Australia and the United Kingdom.
Indians have formed the largest group of international students in Canada in recent years, with more than 41% - or 225,835 - of all permits going to them in 2022. They are also a major source of revenue for Canadian universities as they bring in about C$22 billion ($16.4 billion) annually.
Earlier this week, Miller had said that Canada was considering the possibility of putting a cap on the number of international students, stating that the system has "gotten out of control." This was in response to the ongoing housing and employment shortage. "Right now we have a challenge with the sheer volume" of students coming in, Miller said. "It's just gotten out of control and needs to be reduced - I would say - significantly over a short period of time."
Due to the ease of obtaining work permits and permanent resident status, Canada is a popular destination for international students.
In 2023, the government projected that some 900,000 international students would study in Canada that year, about three times that of a decade ago. Miller said 40% of those students - or some 360,000 - were Indian. The number of permits given to Indian students declined by 4% last year, but they remained the largest group.