New Brunswick’s community colleges are raising alarm bells about recent federal changes to the eligibility for work permits for international students after graduation.

The changes that came last week followed other measures announced in January that capped the post-graduation permits, and New Brunswick Community College CEO Mary Butler says it didn’t come as a surprise that the government wanted to make further reductions.

“But what was surprising this time is that they were going to link postgraduate work permits … to a set number of occupations to be determined at the national level,” she said.

A post-graduation work permit allows eligible applicants who graduated from a designated learning institution to temporarily stay and work in Canada.

Butler said 36 per cent of NBCC’s students last year were international.

It’s just ludicrous in my mind to think that we could take such a macro level, singular measure and apply that across the entire country.– Mary Butler, NBCC president and CEO

A federal news release last week said graduates from programs at public colleges will still be eligible for up to three years, if they graduate from a field of study “linked to occupations in long-term shortage.”

Butler said the college’s mandate is to meet the labour market needs of the province but she doesn’t believe that will be possible if permits are allowed based on national labour shortage requirements.

She pointed to an infographic from N.B. Jobs that showed of the 25,000 people employed in New Brunswick’s construction industry in 2019, about 27 per cent were in the southeast, while 10.4 per cent were in the northeast. 

“Look at the variation in labour need just in the province of New Brunswick, let alone how that varies from coast-to-coast- to-coast-to-coast, and at a national, a regional and then a local level,” said Butler.

“It’s just ludicrous in my mind to think that we could take such a macro level, singular measure and apply that across the entire country.”

In an emailed statement, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada spokesperson Michelle Carbert said the department is recalibrating the post­-graduation work permit program “to better align the program with immigration goals and economic objectives.”

She also said that graduates from university programs will remain eligible for the permit program, “as studies show that these graduates are more likely to acquire transferable knowledge and skills and adapt to changing economic circumstances over the long term.”

Cyrille Simard, the development vice-president at Collège communautaire du Nouveau-Brunswick and former mayor of Edmundston, said the college was able to circumvent the challenges that came with the initial announcement in January.

He said just under 50 per cent of CCNB’s population is made up of international students.

And Simard said immigration is one of the only ways he believes the labour force can be increased with the current demand.

But eligibility for a work permit that hinges on a national, long-term shortage means certain New Brunswick sectors could be left out of the mix, said Simard.

He said there currently isn’t a specific list that identifies those national needs, but he expects more details soon.

Carbert said the long-term shortage occupations the policy is based on are the same as the ones used in the federal Express Entry’s category-based selection process, and a list of eligible fields of study will be published in the coming weeks.

The categories on the Express Entry page are listed as: French-language proficiency, health care, STEM, trades, transport and agriculture or agri-food occupations. 

Simard said there are some CCNB programs that have higher international student populations than others. For example, in Bathurst, at least 66 per cent of students are international in 22 out of the 35 programs, he said.

“If you expect a lower intake of international students in those programs, it would create a problem for Canadian students, because some of those programs might not be sustainable, and we need to close those down,” he said.

“So it’s an issue that’s really important, not only for international students and for the market, but also for Canadian students.”