Jason Ellis

This dissertation examines the development of policy related to international undergraduate students in Canada since the end of the Second World War. It draws on archival materials from the federal, British Columbia, and Ontario governments, and seven institutions: the University of Toronto, Carleton University, Wilfrid Laurier University, Seneca College, the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, and Kwantlen Polytechnic University. The dissertation unearths the initial proto-policies developed by non-governmental agencies that provided services for international students, and examines how the priorities of these service groups were inherited by institutions as the organizations were formally incorporated into universities and colleges. It follows these early policy makers as they responded to international students’ own emerging consciousness, and the transition of students from welcome visitors to dangerous possible immigrants in the eyes of Members of Parliament. Out of this new context emerged differential tuition fees, which were first contested, then embraced by institutions. As differential fees became normalized, they reshaped institutions, driving them to dramatically expand recruitment efforts of international students. The dissertation concludes by examining another unintended emerging policy, as Canadian immigration policy and international student recruitment efforts combine to situate post-secondary institutions as immigrant selectors. In the process, the dissertation demonstrates the development of international student policy in Canada was uneven and reactive. Policy was crafted informally at the institutional level, or by non-governmental actors, and then formalized by institutions or governments when convenient. Although policies emerged fitfully, Canadian policy makers adopted policies only when beneficial for Canada and Canadian institutions, either politically or economically. Yet international student policies were consistently framed as an expression of the “internationalism” of Canadian higher education. However, the different attitudes towards international students embedded in policy demonstrate competing conceptions of internationalism at the institutional and government level. Finally, the dissertation argues that contemporary policy regarding international students, including the 2014 development of a Federal international education strategy, are not a break from this history but instead the culmination of decades of policy debates.

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This dissertation presents a history of Yukon’s public school system between 1960 and 2003 – a history that is inseparable from Yukon’s colonial history as a territory of Canada. This period witnessed a devolution of power from the federal government to the Yukon government that resulted in a shift of the day-to-day political tensions and disputes in Yukon moving from a federal-territorial orientation to a territorial-local one. Two key themes are consistently present in Yukon’s political and educational history. The first is the tension between centralization and devolution of power between levels of government. The second is the confidence required by each level of government to devolve or accept power. Key developments of Yukon’s linked constitutional and educational development serve to periodize the history. The creation of the Advisory Committee on Finance in 1960, the appointment of elected Yukon Council members to the territorial Executive Committee in 1970, the arrival of responsible and representative government to Yukon in 1979 via the Epp Letter, the passage of the Education Act in 1990, and the final devolution of programs and services from the federal government (along with an updated Yukon Act) in 2003 all serve as events that show significant shifts in (or the potential to shift) the transfer of power from the federal, through the territorial, to the local level. Textual documentary sources including federal and territorial government documents and reports, correspondence, newspaper articles, and legislative documents were the primary source materials used to write this dissertation.

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