The Quebec Liberal Party (PLQ) wants government officials to propose immigration targets now that, according to it, Quebec’s “integration capacity” has been reached.
To “regain control of immigration,” the Legault government would benefit from setting up an “integrated planning office” within the Ministry of Immigration, Francisation and Integration, proposed interim Liberal leader Marc Tanguay on Tuesday, two weeks before the start of the parliamentary session.
” [Le premier ministre] François Legault, in 2018, remember when he told us: “take less to take care of it”. Well, he lied to us twice. He didn’t take less and didn’t take care of it,” he said at a press conference in Quebec City.
“When we talk about planning, what does that mean? It’s about determining what the needs of Quebec, of Quebec society, are in three years, in five years, in ten years,” added Liberal immigration critic André A. Morin.
This office, which would report directly to the current minister, would have the objective of determining Quebec’s reception capacity, in addition to acting as an advisor in setting multi-year immigration objectives – permanent or not. It would also have the mandate to collect and make public all relevant statistics on newcomers to Quebec.
The PLQ proposes that “specialized staff” from a series of ministries, such as Housing, Employment, Economy and Education, be directly assigned to the formation of this entity. The objective: “to stop working in silos.”
“It’s by this way of doing it there […] that we can claim to regain control of necessary immigration,” Mr. Tanguay maintained on Tuesday.
After telling his caucus in January that Quebec would have “no choice” to welcome more immigrants in the coming years, the interim leader of the first opposition group agreed Tuesday that Quebec’s intake capacity had now been exceeded. “We recognize that there is a loss of control over our capacity to integrate,” he said during an exchange in English.
The interim Liberal leader expects immigration to continue to dominate the headlines in the coming weeks, when parliamentary activity resumes in Quebec City. In June, a few days after the National Assembly began its summer recess, Premier François Legault expressed a desire to reduce by half the number of temporary immigrants currently housed in Quebec.
According to the latest count, there are almost 600,000 of them. In recent days, both Quebec and Ottawa have announced their intention to reduce the use of low-wage temporary workers.