Ontario ends 2023-24 with nearly balanced budget, partly due to international tuition

Ontario ended the 2023-24 fiscal year with a nearly balanced budget, in part due to higher-than-expected revenue from international student tuition at colleges.

The province released public accounts today, a final tally of the spending and revenues for the last fiscal year and it showed Ontario ended the 2023-24 year just $600 million in the red, down from the $1.3-billion deficit for that year projected in the 2023 budget.

Government officials say revenues were up by $1.6 billion, or eight per cent, from what was expected at the time of the 2023 budget, and that was largely driven by increased tuition revenue from international students at colleges.

Ontario’s post-secondary institutions, particularly colleges, had been increasingly relying on international student tuition revenue after Premier Doug Ford’s government cut domestic tuition by 10 per cent in 2019 and froze it there.

The federal government announced earlier this year that it was slashing the number of international-student permits and Ontario expects that losses for the college sector, whose finances show up on the province’s books, will total about $3 billion over two years.

Federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller announced Wednesday that the number of visas will be further reduced by 10 per cent, and Ontario government officials say they do not yet have an estimate of how that will affect the province’s finances.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.