Foreign student enrollment is beginning to decline in Canada as a result of the country's higher education sector crackdown, which is a preemptive indication that the nation's explosive population expansion may slow down in the coming years.

According to a Statistics Canada report released on Wednesday, there was a decrease of 24,594 individuals in possession of study permits in the first quarter of this year, as opposed to a decline of 16,003 in the same time previous year.

Additionally, the small decrease assisted in decelerating the overall increase in temporary immigration. In the first quarter of 2022, the nation welcomed 131,810 non-permanent residents, marking one of the lowest quarterly net increases since early 2022.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government aims to cut international student permits by 35% from last year in an effort to curb explosive post-pandemic population increases and quell public anger over housing shortages and strains on public services.

While the cap on student visas isn’t expected to take full effect until later this year, the new data show the policy may have helped break a string of record-breaking quarterly gains.

After the new restrictions were announced in January, study visa applications and recruitment processes were interrupted while federal and provincial governments put together allocations of new permits for institutions. The announcement also made Canada less attractive to foreigners who intended to use education as a pathway to permanent residency.

The population grew 0.6% in the first quarter to 41 million. That’s the same quarterly growth rate seen in the previous three months but a marked slowdown from 1.1% in the third quarter of 2023.

Canada has experienced large population gains from inflows of newcomers after the pandemic, with a million new residents added in just nine months to April. Much of the growth is from temporary immigration — a group that includes foreign students and workers as well as asylum claimants.

Without temporary immigrants, the country’s population growth rate during the first quarter would have been 0.3%, the statistics agency said. From 2001 to 2021, the first quarter growth rate ranged from 0.1% to 0.3% in Canada.