On Thursday, February 3, 2022, CASA presented to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration to highlight the difficulties faced by Francophone international students in coming to study in Canada. CASA believes that international students are a critical part of the post-secondary community in Canada. They enrich the educational experiences on post-secondary campuses and facilitate an international forum for the sharing of ideas, expertise, research, and scholarship. As heard by the CIMM Committee in late-2020, study permit applications of French-speaking international students from Africa are disproportionately denied when compared to non-African countries. In our testimony, CASA called on the federal government to re-evaluate IRCC resources to rebalance the immigration system to serve international students looking to study in either of Canada’s official languages.

This testimony can also be viewed with full French and English audio translations on ParlVU.