Hundreds of international graduates in Alberta have had their Post-Graduation Work Permit (PGWP) applications refused this summer — not because their program changed, but because IRCC updated a webpage. On June 24, 2026, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) revised its PGWP eligibility guidance to state plainly that "non-credit" programs don't qualify. Weeks later, graduates who started those exact programs back in 2024 started getting refusal letters. Some are now on hunger strike in Calgary. At least one has filed for judicial review.
What happened
Most of the affected graduates studied through continuing-education partner sites delivering programs on behalf of Portage College, a public college based in Alberta: the Canadian Institute of Osteopathic Therapy (CIOT) in Calgary, and Campbell College in Edmonton. Reported programs include Business Management, Administrative Professional, and Teacher Assistant diplomas.
Students enrolled in 2024, finished their diplomas, and applied for a PGWP — the open work permit that lets international graduates work in Canada and, for many, build toward permanent residence through the Canadian Experience Class. Refusal letters started arriving in late June and early July 2026, citing the program as "non-credit" and refusing the application under R200(1)(c)(ii) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations.
Reports on how many people are affected vary. ICEF Monitor and LiveWire Calgary reported roughly 480 graduates gathering publicly in mid-July. A broader student coalition cited by VisaVerge puts the number of affected graduates above 1,500. Neither figure is an official IRCC count — treat both as reported estimates, not confirmed totals, until IRCC publishes its own numbers.
The rule that triggered it
IRCC's "Post-graduation work permit: Who can apply" page lists who is not eligible for a PGWP — and as of its June 24, 2026 update, that list explicitly includes anyone who "completed a non-credit program of study" (with a narrow exception for qualifying flight schools).
IRCC's position, stated to reporters, is unambiguous: "There have been no changes to the eligibility criteria for the Post-Graduation Work Permit (PGWP) Program. The department updated its website in June 2026 to clarify the existing eligibility requirements related to non-credit programs of study." In other words: this was never allowed, the department says — the page just says so more clearly now.
Affected students dispute that reading. They say the programs were represented as PGWP-eligible when they enrolled in 2024, that they paid international tuition — some report up to $32,000 CAD — on the understanding that a PGWP would follow, and that a decisive eligibility criterion becoming explicit two years after enrollment is not a "clarification" from where they're standing.
A separate 2024 rule is tangled up in this
There's a second layer that makes this messier than a simple credit/non-credit question. Since a rule change affecting public-private partnership (P3) programs took effect May 15, 2024, students at institutions delivering curriculum on a private partner's behalf generally lost PGWP eligibility — unless they began their program on or before that date, in which case they may be grandfathered under the old rules.
Some affected graduates say they enrolled just before the cutoff — one told LiveWire Calgary he started on May 8, 2024, about a week ahead of the May 15 line. On its face, that should preserve their eligibility for the partnership issue. But grandfathering the P3 arrangement doesn't automatically override the separate non-credit exclusion. If IRCC classifies a program as non-credit, that's an independent basis for refusal — regardless of when the student started. Whether a specific program is correctly labelled non-credit is exactly the question now in dispute, and it has to be resolved file by file.
The timeline
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| 2024 | Students enroll in the affected Portage-linked programs at CIOT (Calgary) and Campbell College (Edmonton) |
| May 15, 2024 | IRCC's cutoff for the same-province public-private curriculum-licensing exception takes effect |
| Late 2025–early 2026 | Students complete their programs and submit PGWP applications |
| June 24, 2026 | IRCC's PGWP eligibility page is updated to state plainly that non-credit programs don't qualify |
| Late June–July 2026 | Graduates begin receiving refusal letters citing the non-credit classification |
| July 14–15, 2026 | Portage College acknowledges the refusals publicly, then — after legal advice — stops issuing support letters, saying a college letter can't confirm PGWP eligibility |
| July 16, 2026 | The federal PGWP-eligible institution list is reportedly updated |
| July 17–21, 2026 | Roughly 480 Calgary-area graduates gather publicly; Portage meets with affected students |
| July 24, 2026 | A group of international students begins a hunger strike in Calgary |
| July 29, 2026 | At a Red Deer press conference, PM Mark Carney says he's unfamiliar with the case; Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says students without status "need to go home" |
Update — August 1, 2026: The Prime Minister says he wasn't aware, Alberta's Premier says students need to leave
Five days into the hunger strike, the story reached the two top elected officials most able to change the outcome — and neither offered the graduates relief.
At a joint press conference in Red Deer on July 29, 2026, a Juno News reporter asked Prime Minister Mark Carney directly whether his government was prepared to deport the Portage College graduates on hunger strike in Calgary. Carney said he wasn't familiar with the specific case, but acknowledged that a process exists for people in Canada without authorization who don't have a valid asylum claim — and that the process needs to be followed. He didn't commit to reviewing the refusals or pausing enforcement.
Standing beside him, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith gave a more direct answer: international students whose visas have expired without them securing permanent residency "need to go home." She stopped short of calling Portage College a "diploma mill," but said the college may have "overstated the pathway to permanent residency" to its international graduates. She added a conditional opening — if affected students have skills Alberta needs, the province should be able to offer them a provincial nomination instead of a deportation notice.
That conditional matters because of the math Smith laid out at the same press conference: Alberta currently has roughly 6,400 nomination spots available through the Alberta Advantage Immigration Program against roughly 40,000 people who've applied to the province for permanent residency. She contrasted that with Quebec, which selects about 45,000 of its own permanent residents a year under the Canada–Quebec Accord, and argued Alberta needs a comparable allocation to build real pathways for graduates like the ones now on hunger strike outside IRCC's Calgary office.
The exchange happened in the run-up to Alberta's October 19, 2026 referendum, which will ask voters nine questions on immigration control — including whether the province should take over more authority to set its own immigration levels and priorities. A strong "yes" result wouldn't be binding, but it would hand Smith real leverage in future negotiations with Ottawa over exactly the kind of PNP allocation gap she described.
None of this changes anything procedurally for graduates who've already been refused. Portage College still can't intervene in individual files, and IRCC's position — that the June 24 update only clarified an existing rule — hasn't moved. What's changed is that this is no longer a regional story: it's now tied to a national political fight over provincial immigration control, and Alberta's referendum gives that fight a hard deadline in October. If you're an affected graduate, that political attention doesn't substitute for legal advice — keep pursuing reconsideration or judicial review on your own file rather than waiting on a policy reversal that neither leader signaled is coming.