When I run the numbers, good institutes like McGill and others can only accommodate 50k students per year. So, 50k/900k ~ 5%95% of visas are not diploma mills. Believe 40% of permits are for universities which tend to be mostly genuine students. Colleges are the true issues. The reason the changes were likely made were purely due to housing and not the Liberals and the polls. The levels have also continued to increase but levels were somewhat hidden because students could study from their home country during Covid. In the past year now that students have come to Canada we are feeling the true levels of study permits which has coincided with inflation, higher interest rates, etc. The videos telling people to go to foodbanks to save on your groceries only made the issues even worse and drew a lot more attention to the issue. Many of the issues are actually provincial and due ti licensing of colleges. Many colleges that are degree mills are regulated by provincial goverments so federal government can only do some much. Quebec closed down some colleges at least temporarily a few years ago but places like Ontario have to also shut down many colleges and reverse the private school public school partnership that was only recently allowed. We are only catching up to the same level of POF as Australia and the UK which people in the sector have been calling for for quite a while.
Most other universities don't appear to be worth $30k/yr in tuition fees, hence my opinion that only 5% acceptances can be a decent student intake.