OTTAWA — Auditor General Karen Hogan says the immigration department isn’t keeping up with the demand for investigations of student visa holders in the International Student Program.
An audit of the program published Monday says about 150,000 cases in 2023 and 2024 were flagged because the student visa holders may not have been complying with the terms of their study permits. Such files are most often flagged because students are not attending the academic institutions that accepted them.
The report says the federal government launched only about 4,000 investigations of those flagged cases — and 1,600 of those were marked as inconclusive because the student in question did not respond to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.
IRCC makes two attempts to reach out to students involved in these investigations before a file is marked inconclusive, an official from the auditor’s office explained in a background briefing. The official said this process takes about six months.
Immigration department officials told the auditor they only have the budget to conduct about 2,000 of these investigations annually until 2028.
The department reports about 1,400 students whose files were investigated were found to be studying at the right school, while just 50 were found to be non-compliant. Another 915 investigations were cancelled and 37 investigations are still in progress, the auditor reports.
The department also did not follow up on 800 cases of applicants for approved study permits using bogus documents or misrepresented information on their applications between 2018 and 2023, the auditor found.
The report said this lack of action is a source of “serious concern” because the department would have no warning on file if any of these individuals make future immigration applications.
The audit says 92 per cent of these problematic visa holders applied for some other kind of immigration status to stay in Canada, and 456 of them received approvals.
The audit found that IRCC has no way of knowing how many international students with expired visas are leaving Canada.
The report looked at 549,000 people with expiring study permits in 2024 and found that 93 per cent of them were allowed to remain in Canada, leaving 39,500 who were ordered to leave the country.
The auditor general’s office worked with the Canada Border Services Agency to confirm that only about 16,000 of those expired 2024 student visa holders actually left the country.
The auditor recommended that the IRCC begin sharing with the CBSA a list of students with expired study permits who have not applied for other types of immigration status, so that the agency can better track entry and exit data.
Immigration Minister Lena Diab said in a media statement that the department accepts all of the auditor’s recommendations.
“At the same time, this report captures only the first 18 months of a broader multi-year reform effort that runs through 2027. It reflects an early phase of implementation, not the full impact of the changes now underway,” Diab said.
The annual Immigration Levels Plan outlines a broader goal of reducing the number of temporary immigrants in Canada to less than five per cent of the total population by the end of 2027. A key part of this plan is putting hard caps on the number of international students admitted to Canada each year.
The auditor’s report says that new student visa approvals were far below their predicted levels in both 2024 and 2025.
Roughly 150,000 student visas were approved in 2024 when the anticipated target was nearly 349,000 visas — a 41 per cent approval rate. Only 50,000 had been approved as of Sept. 30, 2025, when officials had expected to approve just over 255,000 visas for the year — a 38 per cent approval rate.
The study permit approval rate was 58 per cent in 2023 and 54 per cent in 2022, the auditor’s report says.
The immigration department says it is not sure why approval rates are dropping, the report adds.
The auditor investigated whether the decline could be linked to new letter-of-acceptance verification rules or increased financial requirements but found neither measure could account for the extent of the approval drop.
The report found that all provinces saw larger-than-anticipated declines in study permit approvals, with all provinces but Quebec seeing reductions in study permit approvals of more than 59 per cent in 2024.
The department reported it expected to see a fluctuation of about 10 per cent in study permit approvals in all provinces except for B.C. and Ontario.
Diab said in her statement that the number of students coming to Canada is influenced by more than just federal policies.
“Provinces and territories oversee education systems and designate institutions, while institutions recruit and enrol students. Actual volumes are also influenced by affordability, housing pressures and student choices,” she said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 23, 2026.
David Baxter, The Canadian Press
