Canada's largest private English language school ILAC files for bankruptcy protection, immediately halting all courses in Toronto and Vancouver campuses
One of Canada's largest private English language training institutions, the International Language Academy of Canada (ILAC), filed for bankruptcy protection on September 18 and immediately ceased all courses at its Toronto and Vancouver campuses, directly affecting approximately 1,362 international students. KPMG has been appointed as the bankruptcy trustee.
ILAC was founded by Jon Kolber, Ilan Cohen, and Bernardo Riveros, operating for nearly 30 years and is one of Canada's largest English teaching institutions; private equity firm Oncap became its majority investor in 2019. ILAC's official statement indicated that the company "no longer has sufficient funds to continue operations," attributing the financial deterioration over the past three years to "significant regulatory policy changes" in the industry, but did not disclose the specific scale of its debts.
In response to market shrinkage, ILAC shifted to a "public-private partnership" (PPP) model at the end of 2020, establishing cooperative projects with Georgian College (2020) and Fanshawe College (2021); it also acquired the study abroad application digital platform UniApplyNow and expanded its online teaching brand ILAC KISS. However, ILAC's own website clearly states that its language courses do not qualify for the Post-Graduation Work Permit (PGWP) application—indicating a structural mismatch between the institution's core business and the mainstream demands of international students for "studying and working in Canada."
Just four days before ILAC filed for bankruptcy, the international chain language school EC English, operating for 35 years, announced on September 14 the immediate closure of all 25 schools across seven countries including the UK, Ireland, Canada, the US, UAE, South Africa, and Malta, affecting over 40,000 students globally, including 375 students in Canada (Toronto and Vancouver), 370 students in four UK schools, and 202 students in the US. EC English CEO Andrew Mangien attributed the closure to "severe financial conditions and failure to secure additional investment"; at its peak in 2019, the institution hosted nearly 50,000 students annually. Languages Canada has intervened to coordinate the transfer of students from the two schools; students enrolled during the week of EC English's closure were all transferred on the same day, with 90% of the remaining students placed within three days.
Languages Canada's 2025 survey report shows that the total number of students at member schools is 81,600, a 13% decrease from 2024; total weeks of study amount to 799,000 weeks, down 19% year-on-year, with the current industry size at only about half of pre-pandemic levels. In 2024, industry data indicated that student numbers had already plummeted by 18% year-on-year, with weeks of study down 21%, and the "language course—college or university" transition program experiencing the most severe decline, dropping 56% year-on-year, accounting for only 8% of total enrollments; in contrast, the proportion of general English/French courses rose to 76% (71% in 2023). Languages Canada Executive Director Gonzalo Peralta stated, "These policy decisions have significantly reduced enrollment numbers, forcing programs to shrink in scale." In 2024, 82% of surveyed language centers listed "visa refusals and policy changes from the IRCC" as the primary challenges faced that year.
The root of the impact is the continuous tightening of federal and provincial study permit allocation policies—at the federal level, the total number of Canadian study permits has decreased from 485,000 in 2024 and 437,000 in 2025 to 408,000 in 2026 (a further 7% decrease from 2025), with only 155,000 permits available for new incoming students; Ontario's provincial allocation of proof of language (PAL) continues the pattern established in 2024—96% allocated to public colleges and universities, while language schools, private colleges, and other private institutions combined can only receive 4%, with language schools receiving only about 2% of actual allocations in 2024 (3,591 permits, far below the 15,000 requested by Languages Canada that year). Beneficiaries are public colleges and universities that receive the vast majority of quotas and have more stable sources of students, as well as programs that can directly link academic education to post-graduation work permits; those under pressure are private language schools like ILAC and EC English, which focus on language training, lack quota guarantees, and whose courses do not meet PGWP eligibility.
The overall tightening of Canada's international student policy has already shown effects in the data—during the first half of this year, the number of newly arriving international students in Canada was only 22,405, far below the annual target of 155,000, and industry organizations had previously warned that the actual enrollment scale for the year would likely "far fall short" of the newly reduced quota limits set by the government.
Source: Public Information
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ILAC's rise and fall trajectory is highly tied to the policy cycle of Canada's international education industry. The institution welcomed private capital entry in 2019 (Oncap became the controlling shareholder) during a peak period of increasing international student numbers in Canada; after 2020, ILAC quickly shifted to a "public-private partnership" (PPP) model in collaboration with colleges, which had previously been a mainstream approach for many private language schools to avoid regulation and bind academic pathways. However, after the federal government halted the eligibility of PPP program graduates for post-graduation work permits in 2024, this core path that had supported ILAC's business expansion was directly cut off. The subsequent series of actions by the company to acquire digital platforms and expand online business ultimately failed to reverse the trend of continuous financial deterioration.
The contraction of funding paths is evident—Canada's federal study permit total has been reduced for three consecutive years (485,000 in 2024, 437,000 in 2025, 408,000 in 2026), and in Ontario's provincial quota distribution, public colleges and universities consistently take 96% of the share, while language schools and other private institutions can only receive 4%. This means that the sources and funds originally flowing to the private language training industry are being forcibly redirected to the public higher education system; at the same time, the "language course—academic transition" pathway that previously supported the business model of private language schools is also shrinking—enrollment in such courses plummeted by 56% in 2024, indicating that funding and sources are systematically shifting from "language training" to "direct application for academic education," and private language schools are being directly squeezed out of their intermediary position in the entire international education industry chain.
The current wave of collective exits from private language schools is most closely comparable to the "closure wave of vocational education institutions" in the early 2010s in Australia's international education industry due to tightened visa policies—at that time, the Australian government tightened visa approval standards for technical immigration courses, leading to a concentration of exits from the market by many private training institutions that marketed themselves as "immigration shortcuts" rather than focusing on educational quality as their core competitiveness. The current stage of Canada's language education industry is highly similar: the industry size has shrunk to half of pre-pandemic levels, with leading institutions (ILAC, EC English) closing in succession, indicating that the industry has transitioned from "healthy competition during the expansion phase" to a "policy tightening-driven phase of clearing out existing stock." The institutions that are likely to survive in the future are those that can directly bind public academic education resources or completely detach from the "academic stepping stone" positioning and shift to pure language skills training.
This essentially belongs to an industry chain reconstruction driven by regulatory changes—through controlling the total number of study permits and provincial quota distribution, the Canadian government has directly redefined the resource allocation weights of different links in the international education industry chain, shifting the resource flow that was originally determined by market demand (students choosing language schools as stepping stones) to being directly determined by policy quotas (with 96% of quotas tilted towards the public higher education system). Mechanistically, this reconstruction can produce the effect of collective exits of private language schools within two to three years because these institutions' business models heavily rely on two previously taken-for-granted premises—stable growth in the total number of international students and the connection between language courses and post-graduation work permit eligibility. Once both premises are removed by policy, private language schools lacking quota guarantees and independent degree-granting qualifications naturally become the first links to be cleared out in the entire industry chain.
ABAB News · Cognitive Law
- When policies tighten, the first to fall are the least licensed links in the industry chain.
- Once the stepping stone is dismantled, the stepping stone itself has no reason to exist.
- The proportion of quota distribution is the true lifeline of the industry.