Lakehead University’s president said she joined 21 of her university leadership colleagues from across Canada on a trip to India as a way of “rebuilding trust” in post-secondary education.
That was one way Gillian Siddall said Lakehead is trying to deal with a decline in undergraduate international student enrolment reported between the 2023-24 and 2024-25 academic years when federal caps on new international student visas came into effect. The president and vice chancellor made those comments during her presentation of the university’s annual report to the community on Thursday.
“The goal of our mission was rebuilding trust, strengthening Canada's educational brand and expanding opportunities for collaboration in research and transnational education,” she told the crowd gathered in the university’s faculty lounge.
“The reality is that these changes are having a profound impact on universities across the country.”
Most of Lakehead’s international students come from India, Siddall said.
Lakehead saw an 11 per cent decline in undergraduate international student enrolment after those caps went into effect, Siddall said. And while those restrictions remain in place, the president said the school continues to recruit foreign-born students in a competitive field, adding that she’s “optimistic” changes could come.
“I think I would say that the current federal government sees the incredible value of encouraging students to come from other countries to study here and so I think we'll see a positive change happening with that,” she said in an interview.
“In the meantime, our teams are doing everything they can to make sure that students in other countries know that Canada is still a great destination for post-secondary education and Lakehead is the best destination for post-secondary education.”
While the drop in international undergraduate students affects the university financially, Siddall said it also has had an impact on the fabric of the school community.
“When you have students studying here from, I think it's over 60 countries in the world, that obviously has a massive impact on the experience of all students at the university and faculty and staff.”
Over 47 per cent of undergraduate students on Lakehead’s Thunder Bay campus come from the Northwest, Siddall said. And while she didn’t have numbers on hand, she said domestic applications for the 2026-27 academic year are up “significantly.”
“Our enrolment, overall, does go up.”
This year sees Lakehead celebrate its 60th anniversary and Siddall’s presentation focused on the university’s ongoing connection to the communities it has campuses in — Thunder Bay, Orillia and a new science, technology, engineering and maths hub slated to open in Barrie in 2026.
“I think it's always been a key feature of who we are, that Lakehead University was born out of a community desire to have a university here in Thunder Bay and in Orillia and now in Barrie,” she told reporters. “I think it has grown just in terms of as the university has grown, the partnerships have grown, as our research activities have grown, those partnerships have grown.”
The school graduated about 3,000 students in 2026, Siddall said.
During her presentation, Siddall also pointed to the ongoing construction of the university’s Gakina Awesiinyag veterinary medicine facility and program — delivered in partnership with the University of Guelph.
Construction on a pair of buildings on Lakehead’s Thunder Bay campus to help house the program is scheduled to be completed during the summer of 2026, alongside renovations to other existing spaces she said, with an accreditation period to follow.
“There's then another phase of accreditation that has to be done to make sure those spaces meet accreditation standards,” Siddall said. “We know they will, but the accreditation process is quite rightly a very serious process.”
“We'll have one more year of students starting in Guelph, and then they will start in Thunder Bay.”
That cohort is scheduled to attend school at the Thunder Bay campus in September, 2027, she said.
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