Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Minister Marc Miller speaks during a news conference, Sept. 18. By capping the number of new international student visas, Miller acknowledged government policy had gone off the rails and took steps to correct it.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press

The boom in the number of international students coming to Canada has been curbed. How do we rate this kind of success?

For years, the ranks had grown year over year, ballooning the number of temporary residents in Canada to roughly three million in a surge of unplanned population growth. Now, that trend is being reversed.

That’s happening because Immigration Minister Marc Miller did something that doesn’t happen very often in politics: He acknowledged government policy had gone off the rails and took steps to correct it.

In the spring, he capped the number of new student visas. Now, new statistics obtained by The Globe and Mail show that change has kicked in just in time for the new school year.

In August, typically the peak month for the arrival of foreign students, the number coming on new study permits fell to just over half of those issued a year earlier: 80,364, down from 152,542. The drop in the number of new permits –........

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