Conestoga College’s controversy is no longer just about its president, John Tibbits’ retirement payout. It is about whether a public college that rapidly scaled an international-student revenue model had the governance controls to manage the money, risk, and scrutiny that came with it.
IRCC briefing material said Conestoga had more than 38,000 study permit holders as of December 31, 2023, up 187% from about 13,000 at the end of 2019. The same material described Conestoga as Canada’s largest designated learning institution by study permit holders, with nearly 8,000 more than the next-largest school.
That scale made Conestoga a national example of the international-student boom. Study permit holders at the college alone accounted for more than 4% of Canada’s total study permit holder population at the end of 2023, according to IRCC.
Conestoga then reported a surplus of approximately $251 million for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2024, while tuition revenue reached about $682 million, according to CityNews Kitchener. Local reporting at the time tied the surplus to the college’s financial statements, while Conestoga’s own annual report described the surplus as one-time and linked it to international enrolment.
That is the backdrop for the payout now drawing political heat. Ontario said an audit found the board approved a 55% salary increase to more than $636,000 in 2024 for Tibbits, per CityNews Winnipeg. The province also said Tibbits received a termination payment equal to 83 times his monthly salary, above the 24-month limit Ontario cited under public-sector executive compensation rules.
Toronto Sun columnist Brian Lilley posted that Tibbits’ exit package was worth more than $3.8 million and that key details were not provided to most board members before approval.
Ontario’s audit findings also pointed to spending controls beyond compensation. In the same Winnipeg report, the province cited a $23,000 Italy trip involving three senior leaders, other higher-cost travel expenses, and an internal staff meal of about $1,300 where alcohol represented half of the pre-tax total.
The Ford government removed Conestoga’s board from control and appointed Linda Franklin as administrator, with a mandate to work with interim president Norma McDonald Ewing on operations, fiscal management, and governance.
The timing matters because Conestoga’s business model was already under stress. CityNews Kitchener reported in 2025 that tuition revenue fell from about $682 million in 2024 to $563 million in 2025, and that Tibbits told staff international enrolment had dropped by 20,000 students since fall 2023, representing an estimated $450 million financial hit.
The governance issue, then, is not only whether one payout was excessive. It is whether Conestoga’s board approved compensation, severance, travel, and spending decisions while the college was heavily exposed to a student pipeline shaped by immigration policy and local capacity constraints.
Conestoga turned international enrolment into a powerful financial engine. The controversy now is whether the institution’s oversight structure kept pace with the scale of that engine before the province stepped in.
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