After two years of immigration cuts, including caps on the total number of international students who will be granted student visas, Canada’s international student intake has dwindled to what they were in the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic, preliminary data from Statistics Canada shows.

Between the academic years 2003-2004 and 2023-2024, the number of full-time international students in public post-secondary institutions in Canada increased eightfold. But after the federal government pumped the brakes with a student cap in January 2024, the numbers started to dwindle, data shows, falling by one-third.

According to new estimates, the number of full-time international students in public post-secondary institutions decreased four per cent for the academic year 2024-2025 and 26 per cent in 2025-26, Statistics Canada said.