After a protest over international students from India struggling to find affordable housing at a campus in the province of Ontario, the management of the educational institution have agreed to meeting their housing requirements.
Students from India enrolled at a campus of Canadore College in the town of North Bay in Ontario staged a protest this week, with several of them living in a tent pitched near its grounds. That started on Tuesday but by Thursday, the college’s management came to an understanding with the students’ group, which was mobilized by the Montreal Youth Students Organization or MYSO.
That protest once again highlighted the ongoing housing crisis in Canada which has led to inflated rents, impacting those like students seeking accommodation.
As the new college year began in September, students arriving at the campus and faced the housing problem as it had an intake of approximately 3500 students despite North Bay being a small and sparsely-populated town.
The outlet North Bay Today cited a college spokesperson as saying, “All of the Canadore students involved in the demonstrations this week at the Commerce Court Campus are currently being housed.”
It added, “Canadore continues to work with all students to find appropriate accommodation. We will provide a more fulsome update next week.”
A release issued by MYSO said the college administration has assured the students that accommodation will be arranged for them at affordable rates, full fee will be refunded without any deduction if students wanted to transfer elsewhere and classes would have an online option as rules of Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada or IRCC.
Khushpal Grewal of MYSO told the Hindustan Times such housing problems being faced by students will only escalate, as he described the situation as a “crisis.”
In August this year, during a Cabinet retreat in Charlottetown, the capital of the province of Prince Edward Island, Canada’s Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Sean Fraser told the media there that “one of the options that we ought to consider” was that of placing cap on the number of international students arriving in Canada.
Grewal likened that to victim-blaming, saying international students suffered the most from high rents, even as Government policy created a housing bubble.
Grewal said they have received the assurance based on their demands from the college, but will resume their demonstration if the matter is not fully resolved by Monday.