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Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Canada wants Indian students

Canada wants Indian students to love us and fall in love while they are here

Indian students are pumping Canada's economy with billions in economic stimulus, CanadaĆ¢€™s junior minister of science and technology said Tuesday.
Minister of State Gary Goodyear said international students pumped $6.8 billion in the country's economy in 2008.

“There are all kinds of fees from tuition fees to room and board, books, transportation, you know, discretionary expenses like haircuts from 5,000 students. The numbers I have are somewhere between 2,800 students and 5,000 (Indian students in Canada). We have about 77,000 full-time international students in Canada and, of course, I am using an example to show you the things that people can spend money on, there is, in fact, quite an economic impact. It doesn’t sound like much on an individual basis but, in total, there are billions of dollars. We believe that the international students contributed somewhere around the neighbourhood of $6.5 billion into the Canadian economy in 2008,” he told reporters in a conference call today.

Goodyear was in New Delhi, India, where he is on a tour with the presidents of many Canadian universities. He said he was working hard to attract more Indian students to study in Canada by funding scholarships and hopefully, some would decide to stay here.

“We do expect a few of them will fall in love with our country and, perhaps, fall in love with someone else and chose to stay here,” he said.