The News Rundown

Only a fraction of 153,000 flagged international students were investigated

It's been clear for some time that Canada's immigration system has still been a major problem within Canada, as now more than ever before, Canadians believe that Canada has been accepting too many immigrants into the country, and that this sentiment is increasingly focused on poor government management rather than the immigrants themselves.
Now we've found that a March 2026 report by Auditor General Karen Hogan revealed that between 2023 and 2024, only a small fraction of 153,000 flagged international students were investigated due to limited capacity, with 800 cases of fraudulent documents identified out of the only 4,057 investigations conducted.
The report said nearly 93 per cent of 700 Canadian learning institutions submitted reports between 2023 and 2024 that flagged the 153,000 cases of potential fraud or non-compliance.
But the department only has funding to investigate 2,000 cases annually. Of the investigations the department did conduct, the report said the department took “limited action” in confirming non-compliance beyond contacting the student for more information.
Roughly 40% of those investigations could not be closed because students simply did not respond to the government’s inquiries.
Immigration Minister Lena Diab said she welcomed the report and committed to “centralizing investigations.”
Diab said: “We will be streamlining anyone that is flagged. We will be doing more reporting, and we will be information sharing with CBSA of any students that are not compliant, or that are not currently students.”
Diab added that non-compliant and fraudulent cases represent a “small percentage” of international student cases.
When asked why the department has such little capacity to investigate fraud, the immigration minister did not provide any details. She also did not provide the number of personnel assigned to investigate the program’s non-compliant and fraudulent cases in her department, which employs over 11,000 people, saying: “We’ll have to get back to you on that.”
The report also found the department failed to monitor which students were expected to leave each year and which students had left the country.
The report said: “It is important for the department to track this information because students are required to leave Canada after permits expire unless they have applied for other immigration programs.”
The auditor general’s office looked at 549,000 students whose study permits expired in 2024 and found 93 per cent were allowed to remain in Canada. Of the 39,500 individuals who should no longer be in Canada, the auditor general’s office confirmed with the Canada Border Services Agency that 16,000 had left the country.
Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel Garner called for substantive reform and said the department should get its priorities in order.
“I think that the auditor general’s report today, it underscores the fact that there aren’t adequate checks and balances to forbid fraud [and] it’s going to further create angst and consternation in the Canadian public about bringing in foreign students into the country through the existing processes, and...it’s going to also put foreign students in danger of being exploited by fraud themselves,” she said.
Opposition leader Pierre Poilievre called the report "damning" and called on Mark Carney to "fire" the ministers responsible for the immigration system over this time who still remain in cabinet: former immigration minister and now Attorney General Sean Fraser, former immigration minister and now Minister of Culture Marc Miller, and the current immigration minister Lena Diab, who he says has also "failed to bring in serious changes that would restore Canadians' confidence in our immigration system".
The report sheds light on how the student program has been used as a "pay-to-enter" instrument rather than for genuine education. The Auditor General noted that some of the 800 fraudulent permit holders eventually filed asylum claims to further stall their removal from the country. This aligns with the broader national issue of the asylum system becoming a secondary pathway for those whose original temporary status is at risk.
Beyond enforcement, the audit found that the government’s attempt to "right-size" the system with the 2024 student cap has been more disruptive than intended. The IRCC's approval rates fell significantly below their own forecasts.
This overcorrection has hit smaller provinces particularly hard, with many experiencing a 59% or greater decrease in new student approvals, far exceeding the 10% fluctuation the government initially expected. This has led to immediate pressures on post-secondary institutions, resulting in course cuts and financial instability for many campuses.
This report reinforces the growing public perception that the immigration system is no longer under control. When 93% of the 549,000 students whose permits expired in 2024 were allowed to remain in Canada, and the government confirmed that only about 40% of those who should have left actually did, it highlights a major breakdown in the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) and IRCC's tracking capabilities.
This report did not receive much attention in the media outside of the National Post, Sam Cooper's article on The Hub, and oddly enough, the Daily Hive. Most mainstream media in Canada continues to put their heads in the sand on immigration, assuming that the government of Mark Carney is fixing the issue, when in reality, a lot of the problems are going unsolved.
Supplementals:

One of the projects approved by the major projects office for Alberta was the Pathways Plus project. A carbon capture and storage project led by the Pathways Alliance now called the Oil Sands Alliance.
The Oil Sands Alliance represents a group of Alberta’s largest oil producers.
The Pathways Plus project or just Pathways Project aims to build a carbon sequestration and storage project near Cold Lake.
Emissions, specifically CO2 will be piped from northern Alberta to the site for storage deep underground.
This week a coalition of indigenous leaders, farmers, and rural Albertans is asking for the project to face a federal environmental review.
The group called No CO2 Pipelines Alberta does not want, in their own words, a “dangerous CO2 pipeline in their backyard.”
The group is worried that the pipeline will sit close to some properties and could cause environmental damage.
One of the indigenous leaders part of the group is Chief Allan Adam of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation. He told reporters that his people are downstream from the project and are concerned about environmental output. Specifically they want an environmental review from the Canadian government.
The Alberta Energy Regulator decided in 2024 that a review was not required. As this project is solely within Alberta federal jurisdiction is close to zero thanks to the Constitution.
That, however, is not stopping the group. Amil Shapka, a St. Paul resident said, “If it is going to be wonderful and it's going to be great for future generations, then we're all in. But I'm not going to stand here and trust an industry that we have no reason to trust. Live next to those oil and gas companies, they are not good neighbours.”
For context that the media did not provide, Shapka in the late 2000s and early 2010s donated quite heavily to the Alberta Liberal Party.
The Oil Sands Alliance called the technology used in the project, proven, saying that it’s used at 77 similar sites across the world and in Canada.
They said, “The Pathways Project proponents value their long-standing relationships in the communities where they operate and are committed to the transparent sharing of information. Consultation and engagement with local Indigenous groups and local communities along the proposed Pathways Project pipeline route began in the fall of 2023 and continues.”
Similar large projects of the 77 mentioned already exist in Alberta.
The Quest CCS Project captures 1 million tons of CO2 per year from Shell’s hydrogen production near Fort Saskatchewan. It is then piped about 60km to a site near Thornhill and then moved underground.
A 240km CO2 pipeline exists to move emissions from the industrial heartland near Edmonton to oil fields near Clive and Lacombe.
In Saskatchewan a carbon capture project works on a coal fired power plant in southeast Saskatchewan. It moves CO2 approximately 74km to the Weyburn area.
There are also oil production fields around Weyburn and Midale that pipe emissions to the United States.
The Pathways Project is a much larger project but there is no reason to suspect that there would be a problem with scaling it up. The technology is proven and there’s no reason to believe that it would be more dangerous.
The hidden angle here is that by requesting a federal environmental review for a provincial project is two fold.
First this tramples of provincial autonomy which been a key irritant in the Alberta-Canada relationship since 2015.
The second is that this is exactly the kind of opposition and obstruction that has the potential to sour investment into Canada’s oil and gas sector.
As we’ve discussed previously we must ask whether we want to seize the opportunity before us for all of Canada or let it slip by.
This story this week leans towards the latter and doesn’t delve into just what kind of pipeline we are dealing with here.
Supplementals:

B.C. NDP misses own target for processing mineral claims

The BC NDP is facing calls of hypocrisy after this week marked the first anniversary of a new framework for registering mineral claims, with growing evidence that the New Democrats have failed to live up to the targets they set for themselves.
The Mines Ministry set a goal of processing applications in “90 to 120 days or faster,” a window that was supposed to include 30 days for consulting with First Nations. The ministry fell well short of that, said a news release Wednesday from the Association for Mineral Exploration: “Recent data reveal that the median number of days for explorers to receive a decision on mineral claims has risen to 143. Accounting for applications that are still pending, only 14.8% of applications were processed within 120 days.”
Nor did the government hit the mark on the promise to expedite consultations with First Nations within 30 days. Many applications were instead delayed for as long as three months.
Darcy Vis, president of Tripoint Geological Services, said regarding the growing backlog of applications under the new system: “I have submitted 27 mineral applications since September 2025, none of which have been approved yet,” he said. “I’m worried that I won’t get the claims ahead of the summer, which may impact my ability to get to them to complete work, particularly the ones in higher elevations that have a short summer season.”
Also weighing in was Association for Mineral Exploration CEO Todd Stone: “There are claims still in the system that were staked a full year ago,” said Stone. “British Columbia can only assume its critical minerals leadership role on the world stage if claim staking service standards are met consistently, thus providing required project certainty. More expeditious consultation with First Nations must be prioritized with government taking a lead role to assist First Nations with the capacity needed to achieve service standards.”
Pushing back was cabinet minister Jagrup Brar, whose Mines Ministry also includes responsibility for the development of B.C.’s critical minerals resource.
“We understand more work needs to be done on claim staking and exploration permitting. That is why budget 2026 places $3 million toward improvements. With this new funding, we’ve already started hiring the additional staff required to ensure that we have one of the best permitting jurisdictions in Canada.”
The Association for Mineral Exploration’s call for expedited consultations with First Nations harks back to a couple of important court cases involving the mineral-claims staking regime.
Three years ago, the B.C. Supreme Court ruled that First Nations must be consulted at the time claims are staked, a departure from the previous practice of putting off the process until the permitting phase for actual mineral exploration work.
Then last December, the B.C. Court of Appeal found the mineral claims regime was inconsistent with provincial legislation implementing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
The province is now redrafting the Declaration Act, as it is known, to discourage similar interventions by the courts. The government’s proposals for the Declaration Act partly saw the light of day this week owing to a timely leak to Canadian Press. The NDP still refused to make public what they have already provided to some Indigenous leaders.
While the public is left guessing about the government’s intentions, the Association for Mineral Exploration has released its proposals for rewriting the Act to head off further court action.
The key change would reframe the obligation to align existing laws with the UN Declaration. It should be done “in consultation and co-operation with the Indigenous peoples, in concurrent engagement with the affected public, and in accordance with the priorities and process outlined in the action plan described in this Act.”
The association would delete a clause saying one of the purposes of the Act is to “affirm the application of the UN Declaration to the laws of B.C.” Also delete a passage that says “nothing in this Act is to be construed as delaying the application of the Declaration to the laws of B.C. A change in the related Interpretation Act would repeal the requirement that “every act and regulation must be construed as being consistent with the UN Declaration.”
The association submitted its proposals to the government two months ago. In a covering letter, Stone, who voted for the Declaration Act as a B.C. Liberal MLA, noted that the Association for Mineral Exploration had initially supported the Act, believing it would “provide a clear, transparent and timely project review process.”
Stone said: “The lived experience of our members with the Act has been the opposite of this and entirely negative. Decisions and legislative changes have been developed in secret and once unveiled provide little to no benefit to mineral exploration.”
B.C. hit a new exploration spending high of $750 million last year, but most of that was concentrated in “extremely well capitalized, large projects" in the Northern Triangle in northwestern B.C., according to Stone. Meanwhile, many early exploration prospectors and junior mining companies are struggling, but they remain critical components of the mining pipeline in the province, he added.
If BC wants to become a leader in critical mineral mining and supplement the federal government's strategy, and incidentally, help BC get out of the massive debt the NDP finds itself in, then they need to start hitting their own targets, otherwise we can't trust that the NDP's plans for the province will ever be realized. And maybe, with Eby's government running the show, that might be a good thing.
Supplemental:

https://www.biv.com/news/resources-agriculture/mining-exploration-group-urges-bc-to-stick-to-decision-timeline-12069747

Firing Line

Air Canada CEO summoned to Ottawa over English-only condolence message after plane crash

Last Sunday Air Canada Jazz flight 8646 collided with a firetruck on the runway upon landing.
Flight 8646 was cleared to land and had touched down. Then it crashed into a fire truck which was crossing runway 4 at 11:45pm eastern.
The fire truck was responding to an emergency call at another location at the airport. Initial reports pin the cause on air traffic control or the fire truck. To have a full picture of what happened we must wait for the full investigation.
The front portion of the Air Canada Jazz airplane was torn off. This resulted in the two pilots being killed, the only casualties of this accident.
Others were injured including a flight attendant who was ejected while still attached to her seat.
Typically when an airline crash happens the focus is on the safety record of the plane, pilots, or airport. This time though almost before the pilots returned home the discussion has fallen to that of bilingualism in Canada.
Air Canada CEO Michael Rousseau issued a statement of condolences to the families of the pilots of the crash.
The issue though is that the statement was only issued in English.
The House of Commons took up the issue and passed an almost unanimous motion stating that the statement is ““incompatible with the obligations set out in the Official Languages Act and the expectations of the Canadian public.”
The Committee on Official Languages also summoned Rousseau and evoked their “strong indignation.”
Rousseau will have to appear before the committee on May 1 to “explain himself” to the committee which has reported receiving 84 complaints as of Tuesday.
Three years ago that same Official Languages committee voted to not require the CEO of Air Canada to understand French, at the time only the Bloc Quebecois voted in favour of that requirement.
Federal Ministers have had a variety of responses to this chain of events. Transport Minister Steven MacKinnon said “Air Canada knows better.”
Bloc Quebécois leader Yves-Francois Blanchet called it a “sad and gross lack of respect towards the loved ones and family.”
Industry Minister Melanie Joly called it “a lack of empathy and lack of sensitivity.”
The Quebec National Assembly of course went further using words like contempt, French not being a priority for Air Canada, and a lack of sensitivity.
The reality here is that almost immediately in Canadian media the discussion turned to one of whether or not the CEO of Air Canada spoke French.
This went all the way to the top in this country with even Prime Minister Mark Carney condemning what had just happened, the language used, not the plane crash.
He said, “We proudly live in a bilingual country, and companies like Air Canada particularly have a responsibility to always communicate in both official languages.”
Air Canada in the past has done land acknowledgements on special flights departing from Vancouver.
It is clear at this point that the media and government has lost the plot.
As of the last full census in 2021 less than 30% of the Canadian population spoke French.
French language education is not mandatory across this country with some school boards putting in only 3 years of mandatory French in Alberta.
30% of Canadians reportedly speak French. The rest speak English or any number of languages from the various diasporas that call Canada home.
If we summarize what has happened, two people are dead, many more injured and hospitalized, and many will be suffering from prolonged PTSD.
The government and media is instead focused on languages.
The family members of the deceased have not spoke so we don’t know if they are upset with the CEO of Air Canada.
But there is a kernel of this story that many people do not know. English is the official language of global aviation. If you fly in the US, Quebec, India, China, or the deep end of Africa, you are required to speak English when talking with Air Traffic Control.
That means that both pilots were beyond proficient in English.
Chris Selley of the National Post said that this case does represent an Air Canada PR issue. Rousseau should not have issued the statement but also he should not have agreed to work on his French years ago. Selley said, “he should have said something like, ‘I’m an airline CEO, this is ridiculous and pointless, piss off.’”
Bilingualism is perhaps one of Canada’s most discriminating features. You can only get a federal government job in most cases if you are one of the 30% of Canadians who can speak both languages. There of course may be exceptions for those who are highly skilled in a field but if you are wanting to work in the national capital region or move up in the bureaucracy you had better know how to speak French.
Let’s now ask ourselves what the media and government would be saying if a company from Canada’s west made similar demands of their CEO.
As a final note, the political angle here also plays well for the Liberals with the impending Terrebonne by-election. It will be a toss-up between the Liberals and the Bloc Quebecois. If the Liberal government can virtue signal hard enough there is a chance that they can win over some BQ voters in that crucial by-election for their majority quest.
It is no surprise that the Liberals would use such a tragedy for political gain but to the eyes of the media and easterners it’s just about bilingualism and how that makes everyone Canadian.
Supplementals:

Quote of the Week

“We proudly live in a bilingual country, and companies like Air Canada particularly have a responsibility to always communicate in both official languages.” - Mark Carney on the Air Canada CEO’s inability to speak French.

Word of the Week

Bilingualism - the ability to speak fluently in two languages.

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Show Data

Episode Title: Bilingual Responsibilities
Teaser: The immigration ministry lets fraud go uninvestigated, the Pathways carbon capture project is being protested, and the BC NDP fail their own targets on approving mineral claims. Also, a tragic Air Canada crash gets pivoted to bilingualism by the Liberals.
Production Code: WC-462-2026-03-28
Recorded Date: March 28, 2026
Release Date: March 29, 2026
Duration: 59:41
Edit Notes: None

Podcast Summary Notes

Duration: XX:XX