The Financial Post reports in its Tuesday edition that the federal government says its new limit of issuing about 360,000 international study permits -- 215,000 less than in 2023 -- can alleviate pressures on housing, health care and other services, but some economists expect the impact to be negligible. The Post's Naimul Karim quotes Bank of Nova Scotia economist Rebekah Young saying: "The impact will be marginal at the macro level. They capped it at 360,000, but we still have an annual permanent resident target of 500,000 and the temporary foreign worker program, too. We are now likely looking at a population [growth] of one million instead of 1.2 million." The two-year cap was announced last week by Immigration Minister Marc Miller, who said the foreign student program was in a "bit of a mess" due to some unethical institutions with "sham" commerce degree programs that students did not even attend. "Those institutions need to be shut down," he said. Although about 575,000 study permits were issued last year, there were 970,000 people in the country with such permits as of October, 2023. This is because people can have multiple study permits or even decide against coming to Canada after getting a permit approved.