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The McGill University campus.
HARD NUMBERS: Foreign no-shows in Canadian schools, Ontario makes a big call to doctors, Dastardly dye dies in US, Gringo companies send toxic waste south
100: Meanwhile, the government of Ontario is looking to have 100 foreign-trained doctors licensed to practice in high-need communities such as Sudbury, Goderich, and Huntsville. This comes after the province missed its initial target of 50 by the end of 2024. The program aims to address shortages in primary care physicians as older doctors retire and population growth continues.
3: This isn’t only a hard number, it’s a red number. Red 3, to be precise, is a food coloring that is being banned in the US, food safety regulators announced Wednesday. The bright red petroleum-based dye — used in candies, soft drinks, pills, baked goods, and, famously, maraschino cherries — has been found to cause cancer in lab animals. The move is a victory for consumer protection groups that have sought the dye’s death for decades. Food producers have two years to replace it in their products, and pharma companies get an extra year beyond that.
200,000: US companies sent some 200,000 tons of toxic waste to a single processing plant in Monterrey, Mexico, in 2022. Researchers recently found extremely high levels of neurotoxins in the soil surrounding the Zinc Nacional plant, which treats the dust generated from recycling metal junk — such as cars, electronics, and appliances — and turns it into fertilizers and other products. Lead contamination levels alone in homes near the plant were found to be more than 60 times higher than what the US considers safe.Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum shows a 1661 world map showing the Americas and the Gulf of Mexico in response to US President-elect Donald Trump's comments about renaming the body of water, during a press conference at National Palace in Mexico City, Mexico, on Jan. 8, 2025.
Hard Numbers: Ring of “América Mexicana,” Canada to the fire rescue, Students’ stingy stipends, Ghost crimes soar
418: What was the United States called before it was the United States? “Mexican America,” according to a 418-year-old map shown by Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum at a press conference on Wednesday. “It sounds nice,” she said, “no?” The display was meant as a clapback to US President-elect Donald Trump’s proposal a day earlier to rename the Gulf of Mexico “the Gulf of America.”
2: Two Canadian planes are helping California to battle the massive wildfires currently raging near Los Angeles. The two Canadair CL-415s are specialized bombers that can fill their bellies with fresh or salt water to dump on fires. Canada has been sending firefighter aircraft to California seasonally for three decades.
9,500: If you want to do a PhD in biology or physics in Canada, you’d best be financially secure before you start. The average stipend for Canadian graduate students studying those subjects leaves them CA$9,500 (US$11,900) below the poverty line, according to a new study in the journal Nature. To keep pace with the cost of living, stipends would have to increase by 150%.
1,600: The United States is becoming a “ghost” town, at least when it comes to firearms. The number of privately made, untraceable “ghost guns” found at crime scenes each year surged from about 1,600 in 2017 to more than 27,000 in 2023, an increase of some 1,600%. Later this year, the US Supreme Court will rule on the legality of a Biden administration effort to crack down on these weapons.
A Canada Post mailbox is seen in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in November 2024.
Hard Numbers: US mail to Canada stops, Border apprehensions fall, Foreign students face Canadian exits, Climbing team missing
55,000: Santa’s sleigh may struggle to go north this year. A strike by some 55,000 Canada Post employees has led the US Postal Service to alert customers that it will not be able to deliver to Canadian addresses for the foreseeable future. Just ahead of the holiday season, the service stoppage is likely to cause headaches to cross-border families trying to exchange gifts.
700: The US border patrol said its agents on the Canadian border had apprehended about 700 migrants crossing illegally into the US in November, down from 1,300 in October. Crossings are down on the southern border too, with 47,000 apprehensions in November, the lowest figure since July 2020.
766,000: Some 766,000 foreigners in Canada hold student permits that are set to expire by the end of 2025. While some permits will be renewed, many of the foreign students will likely have to leave Canada amid the country’s rising economic and housing concerns. The most affected country? India, whose young people make up the majority of foreign pupils in the Great White North.
3: Three climbers, two Americans and one Canadian, went missing on Monday while attempting to scale New Zealand’s highest peak, Mount Cook (also known as Aoraki). Bad weather has stymied search efforts, and New Zealand authorities say they have “grave concerns.”A statue of McGill University founder James McGill is seen on the campus in Montreal, October 2, 2009.
Trouble on the northern border
Canadian Immigration Minister Marc Millerwarned Canada on Sunday of an “alarming trend.” Foreign students are making asylum claims – the latest issue to confront his government as it struggles to get the immigration system under control.
In recent years, Canadian universities and colleges have increasingly relied on foreign students, who pay higher tuition than Canadians, to deal with funding shortfalls. But the wave of students – more than a million were admitted in 2023 – is being blamed for everything from a shortage of rental accommodations to security fears. A Pakistani national arrested as he was allegedly en route to New York to conduct a mass shooting at a Jewish centre came to Canada on a student visa.
Miller has twice decreased the number of visas available to foreign students, but more than 70,000 already in Canada are now facing deportation when their visas expire. In the next three years, 396,235 foreign student work permits will expire. If Canada gets tougher on students and other temporary foreign residents, a think tank warns that some could try their luck in the United States, increasing tension on the border.
The Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s Center for North American Prosperity and Security wrote in the Wall Street Journal that a surge of migrants is already starting to enter the United States, crossing into New York, New Hampshire, and Vermont. There were 180,000 interactions with U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents on the northern border between January and August, up from 27,180 in all of 2021.
The Canadian side may want to redouble its efforts to get a handle on the problem. Polling shows immigration is one of Donald Trump’s strongest issues, so any influx along the normally quiet northern border could give him a boost in the swing states where he and Kamala Harris are locked in a razor-close race.
And Canadians may want to avoid that. A report released Thursday from the Peterson Institute for International Economics estimated that Trump’s tariffs would cost the Canadian economy US$60 billion over the first three years.