While credits exist for tuition, businesses in Ontario remain uncompensated for other costs associated with training. As a result, workforce training has fallen behind international peers, and is heavily concentrated among larger firms.

Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre has said that he’d end the temporary foreign workers program, with no new visas issued. Agriculture exemptions have been promised, with a standalone program for “genuinely hard-to-fill” agricultural jobs remaining.

Ontario’s post-secondary educational institutions are enduring a double whammy of frozen tuition fees and cuts to international student intakes. This is causing significant economic hardship for those institutions which, as major economic drivers in their communities, in turn reduces economic activity and prosperity overall. 

Post-graduate work permits (PGWPs) will now only be issued for professions that the government feels are important for the national economy, with no local input. 

Communities across Ontario are experiencing increased demand for all types of housing, including housing for post-secondary students. Students occupy rental units that could go to residents if dedicated housing for the students themselves, appropriate to their needs, were available. However, post-secondary institutions do not receive funding from government for housing development, maintenance, or upkeep, and under the dual financial pressures of tuition freezes and international student caps, do not have funding to make the appropriate investments in housing themselves.