Conestoga College: The Hard Downfall: A Research Dossier
How to read this dossier
This is not a narrative feature; it is a working intel file. It consolidates Parliament’s April 2026 CIMM report on the International Student Program, Conestoga’s own annual reports and press releases, Ontario Sunshine List records, and contemporaneous media and union coverage into one place for reference.
Readers can use it in three ways:
- As a timeline of Conestoga’s rise, peak, and collapse.
- As an evidence bank for further reporting, organizing, or policy work.
- As a case study in how accolades, rankings, and local boosterism can conceal structural harm until the system breaks.
Overview
For roughly a decade, Conestoga College was held up as one of Canada’s great post-secondary success stories. Awards. Surpluses. A president celebrated as a community pillar. A brand associated with growth, skill-training, and economic contribution. Then, in the span of about two years, that story inverted. Parliament named it a case study in institutional failure. Its president resigned under pressure. Nearly 400 staff were cut. Programs were cancelled. Enrolment collapsed by more than 60%.
This dossier documents that arc, from the peak of accolades to the parliamentary reckoning, organized for use as a research and writing reference.
Part One: The Machine at Full Speed (2019–2023)
The Numbers Behind the Brand
Conestoga’s growth during this period was not subtle. By the end of 2023, the college hosted approximately 38,000 international study-permit holders, the most of any designated learning institution in Canada, having grown that number by 187% since 2019. Its international enrolment had risen a staggering 1,579% over seven years, from 763 students in 2014–15 to over 12,000 by 2021–22. By the 2023–24 academic year, revenues had nearly tripled to $945 million compared to just three years prior.
The financial rewards were enormous. Conestoga recorded a surplus of $57 million in 2021–22 and $106 million in 2022–23. In 2023–24, that surplus more than doubled to $252 million. International students paid roughly three times the tuition charged to domestic students, a pricing asymmetry that drove the bulk of this windfall.
What Conestoga Told the World
The college’s public framing of this growth was unfailingly triumphant. President John Tibbits told the Greater Kitchener Waterloo Chamber of Commerce that Conestoga had “built up a business that brings about $400 million into the local economy … and helps fuel Canada’s immigration strategy.” That framing earned Conestoga the Chamber’s 2023 Business of the Year award (over 50 employees), given in March 2023 at a gala at Bingemans.
In May 2023, the Lions Club of Kitchener named Tibbits, who had served as Conestoga’s president since 1987, its 63rd Kitchener-Waterloo Citizen of the Year. Kitchener mayor Berry Vrbanovic praised him publicly for his “passion for learning and his dedication to community building”. That same spring, Colleges and Institutes Canada (CICan), the national body, gave Conestoga its Silver Award of Excellence in Applied Research at the World Congress.
The college also consistently posted the top graduation rate in Ontario, 72.9% for 2022–23, ahead of the provincial average of 65%, and ranked among Canada’s top twenty research colleges. CourseCompare named it the Best College in Ontario for both 2025 and 2026, the latter ranking published even as the institution was visibly crumbling.
The Engine Nobody Named
Despite the public bragging, the mechanism behind this growth was never candidly explained to the workers executing it. Faculty, support staff, and instructors, including those hired remotely during the pandemic, were told only that Conestoga was “a major force” in college circles. The college’s own news materials framed the institution’s growth in terms of community service and labour-market responsiveness, not in terms of the international-student tuition dependency that made it possible.
Internally, however, warnings existed as far back as 2020. A committee of 50 Conestoga faculty outlined concerns to college officials about rapid growth and deteriorating academic standards, including students referring to programs as a “joke” because the students’ only goal was to “get into Canada,” and instructors being overruled by management when they applied the college’s own policies on late and missed assignments. Those concerns were not acted on publicly.
Part Two: The Cost of “Growth” (2022–2024)
What Was Actually Happening on the Ground
While Conestoga recorded its largest surpluses in history, the people inside the institution told a different story. In local and national media in 2023 and 2024, faculty reported difficult teaching conditions: students significantly underprepared for classes and faculty being required to give up offices to make room for more classes. Students working up to 40 hours a week off-campus to cover high international tuition and rent could not focus on their studies.
Housing became a public crisis. Conestoga’s aggressive recruitment was directly linked in media coverage to severe shortages in the Waterloo region. International students described paying high rents, falling victim to rental scams, and living in severely overcrowded conditions. A regional councillor described some of those conditions as “inhumane.” At its peak, Conestoga’s student population in Kitchener’s main campus alone exceeded 20,000.
The union representing faculty was not quiet. Leopold Koff, president of OPSEU Local 237, said publicly that there appeared to be “more of a push to pass people through, to get them through the program and to graduate, with whatever it takes,” rather than applying rigorous academic standards. Faculty reported that some agents used by the college to recruit students abroad were “untrusted and improperly-vetted” and placed students “into programs where they don’t belong and don’t want to be.”
The Federal and Parliamentary Spotlight
As conditions became national news in early 2024, Parliament moved. The House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration (CIMM) prepared a specific briefing note on Conestoga dated February 28, 2024. In January 2024, the federal government announced, for the first time, a cap on new study permit applications, aiming to reduce the annual number of new permits by 35%.
Then, in October 2025, Tibbits himself was called to testify before the CIMM. He appeared by video link. Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner told him that Conestoga had welcomed 84,000 international students over the past four years, a number that had “a significantly detrimental effect” on local housing costs, health care services, and contributed to a youth unemployment crisis. Tibbits defended the college’s actions by saying there was “no question” that the federal government, the Ontario government, and local municipalities and industries wanted Conestoga to “grow dramatically because they couldn’t fill positions across a wide range of industries: health care, skilled trades.”
The CIMM’s final report, Reconstituting Canada’s International Student Program, published in April 2026, includes a formal Conestoga case study in Part One. The report uses the college as the central example of how aggressive recruitment by some DLIs created the housing, affordability, and academic-integrity crisis that prompted the 2024 reforms. The report documents the 187% growth in study-permit holders since 2019 and the $106-million surplus alongside the deteriorating teaching and living conditions.
Part Three: The Collapse (2024–2026)
Enrolment Free-Falls
The federal cap hit Conestoga harder than almost any other institution, because it had built more of its revenue on international students than any other. By spring 2025, the college reported 8,584 international students enrolled, a 62% drop from 22,633 the previous year. By fall 2025, new international recruitment had dropped by roughly 95%. Tibbits acknowledged in a message to staff that Conestoga’s international enrolment had fallen by 20,000 students since fall 2023, equalling a financial loss of approximately $450 million.
Tuition revenue dropped from approximately $682 million in 2024 to $563 million in 2025. The college’s surplus for fiscal year 2024–25 was $121 million, a fall from $252 million the year before, and the college forecasted a deficit for 2025–26. The college simultaneously confirmed it would allocate $145 million toward capital projects, a contradiction that drew media and union criticism.
The Layoffs
The job losses came in waves. By December 2025, 181 full-time faculty had received layoff notices, many just before the holiday season, followed days later by 197 support staff. By March 2026, nearly 400 full-time staff had either been laid off entirely or forced into part-time roles. Union president Koff described it as “complete devastation for almost 400 people.”
The union representing support staff, OPSEU Local 238, called the cuts “deliberately underfunding and bad management choices” and a “cost to our students.” Union leaders asked the province to step in, arguing that leadership had “reorganized the workforce to promote instability.” They also pointed specifically to Tibbits, noting that while layoffs were occurring, he had received a 28.6% pay raise in 2024, bringing his total compensation to $636,107 on the Ontario Sunshine List. Ontario’s Minister of Colleges and Universities later called that compensation “egregious.”
In November 2025, the union reported that 80 programs would be cut by fall 2026. The supply chain program, the college’s partnerships program, and dozens of others were suspended or cancelled as declining enrolment made them financially unviable.
The Lawsuit and the End of Tibbits
Even as Conestoga’s collapse unfolded, Tibbits became publicly embroiled in a lawsuit. When David Orazietti, president of Sault College, publicly criticized Conestoga’s role in driving the federal government’s decision to cap study permits, Tibbits responded with derogatory language about his counterpart, resulting in legal action and widespread condemnation from Conestoga’s own unions.
On January 14, 2026, Tibbits announced his retirement, effective immediately, in an email to students and staff. He had originally planned to retire in August 2024, postponed his departure, had his contract extended to end of 2026 in March 2025, then left abruptly in January 2026 before a planned replacement was in place. Unions stated publicly that their sustained pressure had preceded his exit, and labelled his legacy at the college a “legacy of ruin.” Norma McDonald Ewing was named interim president.
His was Conestoga’s first leadership change in nearly 40 years.
Part Four: The Systemic Explanation
Why It Happened: Federal and Provincial Failure First
The CIMM report and expert testimony make clear that Conestoga did not create the conditions for its own growth in a vacuum. The federal government ran an open-door study-permit regime, applications were simply processed “as they were received,” with no cap, and actively co-recruited international students alongside DLIs with messaging like “Study—Explore—Work—Stay.” During the COVID era, it doubled the permitted off-campus work hours for international students from 20 to 40, which expert Alex Usher told the committee meant Canada had “by far the most generous set of conditions” internationally, attracting a “flood” of students.
At the provincial level, Ontario had cut per-student college funding to below half the national average, a gap that had never recovered since the 1990s. As Usher testified: “Colleges said, ‘You won’t give us the money, so let us go get it ourselves.’” Ontario loosened regulations on college enrolment on three occasions between 2019 and 2024. The structural incentive was built in at every level of government.
Why Conestoga Was the Extreme
Even within this permissive environment, Conestoga went further than others. The college reached 38,000 study-permit holders in 2023, a number that had grown 187% in four years. It relied on recruitment agents in India who were, by its own faculty’s account, “improperly-vetted.” It overrode faculty grading standards to push students through programs. It stripped faculty of fixed desks to build more classrooms. It ignored a 2020 internal faculty report outlining deteriorating academic standards.
Expert André Côté told the committee the whole system had become “a numbers game” rather than an education- or job-focused endeavour. The CIMM report’s case-study language is measured but pointed: it documents the college’s aggressive recruitment strategy as one that “often prioritized revenue over education.”
The Award Ecosystem Failure
One of the starkest features of this story is that the very institutions that should have provided oversight, the Chamber of Commerce, the Lions Club, the national college association, were instead rewarding the behaviour that Parliament later condemned. The awards Tibbits and Conestoga received in 2023 were based on the same growth metrics that, 18 months later, became the central evidence in a parliamentary case study on institutional failure.
The federal government encouraged growth; the provincial government defunded alternatives; the local business community celebrated the revenues; the national sector body gave out an award; and the rankings industry listed the college as the best in Ontario twice, the second time as it was laying off hundreds of staff. The parallel failure of every oversight layer is itself part of the story.
Key Data Points for Reference
| Metric | Value | Period |
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The Salary Arc: A Data Thread Through the Whole Story
Tibbits’ compensation on Ontario’s Sunshine List tracks the growth story almost perfectly, and makes his exit more striking:
His salary doubled between 2021 and 2024, precisely tracking the years of aggressive international enrolment growth. The provincial government’s Minister of Colleges and Universities, Nolan Quinn, publicly called the 2025 salary “egregious”. The Sunshine List release in spring 2026 came alongside coverage of layoffs, and the board faced criticism from the minister.
The Accolades That Did Not Age Well
The following items form the “before” side of the contrast:
- March 2023: Greater Kitchener Waterloo Chamber of Commerce names Conestoga Business of the Year. Tibbits frames the college as an economic engine fuelling Canada’s “immigration strategy.”
- April 2023: Colleges and Institutes Canada awards Conestoga a Silver Award of Excellence in Applied Research at its World Congress.
- May 2023: The Lions Club of Kitchener names Tibbits its 63rd Citizen of the Year; the sitting mayor praises his “community building.”
- March 2024: Conestoga claims Ontario’s top graduation rate, 72.9%, and frames this as proof of quality even as Parliament begins its study.
- January 2025 and January 2026: CourseCompare names Conestoga Best College in Ontario, the second time as layoff notices are being issued.
Notes: 1. I worked at Conestoga as a remote Communications professor during the pandemic.
2. Data and documentation in this article were compiled with the assistance of Perplexity AI, drawing on the April 2026 CIMM report, Ontario Sunshine List records, Conestoga’s own annual reports, and contemporaneous media coverage.