00:00:01.860For the Prime Minister, are you prepared to deport the students of Portage College
00:00:05.520who are hunger-striking to stay in Canada despite having no permit to remain?
00:00:09.660And to Premier Smith, are you prepared to start decertifying diploma mills in Alberta?
00:00:15.500I'm not familiar with the specific case, I'm afraid.
00:00:19.200And we have processes to make those decisions, and they need to be followed.
00:00:27.460And if people are not here, you know, if they don't have authorization to stay and they don't have right to claim asylum, then there's a process that would be followed.
00:00:36.340But I'm not familiar with the details of the question. Thank you.
00:00:39.680I wouldn't describe Portage College as a diploma mill.
00:00:43.820There have been instances where I think unscrupulous operators have set up diploma granting programs and taken advantage of students.
00:00:54.380I think perhaps Portage maybe overstated the pathway to permanent residency.
00:01:00.680But our view is that if you come here as an international student and your visa expires and you don't have permanent residency, you need to go home.
00:01:07.940But it also goes to the prime minister's earlier point that if those students have the skills that we need, then we're best positioned to be able to offer them permanent residency.
00:01:16.920At the moment, we only have 6,400 spots.
00:01:19.280I think we've got 40,000 people who have sought permanent residency from us.
00:01:24.340And so that's why I think we need a bit of a better balance.
00:01:27.580Quebec is able to choose about 45,000 of their permanent residents through a different program.
00:01:33.300And so if you're looking at the scale, we think that we need to be able to have more autonomy to do that.
00:01:37.980And then that would allow us to address some of the pressures that we're hearing about in the news
00:01:41.460and also make sure that those who go through those programs with the hope of getting permanent residency,
00:01:46.540As long as we can identify a pathway where there's a job that is one that cannot be filled
00:01:52.120by an Alberta worker, then I think that we can work with the federal government to find
00:01:56.000more opportunities for us to make those choices.