Indian students in Canada struggle to find housing, food, jobs

International Desk: Indian students are demanding full refunds from universities now so they can leave Canada, because those univerisites have not provided proper resources. Some of the students also want to be able to take classes from home. What will happen to Canadian universities of India stops sending people here to study, and what will happen to all that housing demand?

Some students in North Bay are currently waiting for a full fee refund from their university for lack of resources. Students have urged the varsities to provide affordable housing to international students or transfer them to another campus of this university. They further demanded permission to attend online classes or/and should be exempted from the 50 per cent classroom attendance condition laid by IRCC for a work permit. Moreover, some students like Chiranjeet had also requested a full refund of the tuition fee without any deduction.

I arrived in Brampton and searched for affordable housing in North Bay for nearly 10 days, but in vain. Then when I had to shift to North Bay for my college, I had to book a hotel for the first three days which cost me CAD 120 per day,” she said. Riya’s savings were depleting and thus she decided to start sharing the motel room with three other girls. “This helped me a bit as the rent decreased to nearly CAD 30 every day. I reached out to my college for support, but they said that since they have limited resources, they will not be able to help us, at least for the time being,” she added.

“We used to get complimentary breakfast from the hotel we were staying at, but that was usually an omelette and since I am a vegetarian, I was stuck with bread. In the mornings, I used to eat bread with butter or jam and then keep some bread slices aside for the day. After attending college the whole day, I used to eat those bread slices in the evening. For nearly a week, I survived just on that,” she said

In addition to the job crisis, Khushi also wants to shift out of Canada as the weather conditions are too harsh for her which can “make it difficult to go out for the job if you are lucky enough to find one. We cannot afford pay cuts or health issues there, so it is better to shift to somewhere else,” she added.