There are 600,000 temporary immigrants in Quebec. Premier François Legault says the federal government is responsible for 420,000 of them, and is asking his counterpart Justin Trudeau to cut that number in half. Is he right?
No, not really.
The 600,000 figure includes asylum seekers and other similar categories, such as protected persons, temporary foreign workers, foreign students, as well as their family members.
Quebec is responsible for foreign students, who number approximately 120,000. For each student admitted to an educational institution, the Ministry of Immigration, Francisation and Integration (MIFI) issues a Quebec Acceptance Certificate (CAQ). Without this CAQ, it is impossible for the candidate to apply for a study permit from the federal government.
Quebec is also responsible for the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP): agriculture, but also health, housekeeping, catering, food processing, etc. This represents some 60,000 workers, mainly established in the regions.
This is what leads Mr. Legault to say that Quebec is responsible for 180,000 temporary immigrants. He then proceeds to subtract, removing these 180,000 from the total of 600,000 non-permanent residents. And he concludes that these remaining 420,000 immigrants are the responsibility of the federal government.
This is an arithmetic operation that cannot be done. Why? Because there are two types of statistics to measure immigration: those of Statistics Canada and those of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC). These figures do not measure the same people and do not give the same totals.
Statistics Canada follows a demographic approach: it counts permanent residents, including family members, whether or not they hold permits. IRCC, for its part, operates with an administrative approach. It counts those who have official papers, such as asylum seeker status, or a permit issued under one of three major programs: the foreign student program, the TFWP and the federal international mobility program (IMP).
“We must keep in mind that IRCC and Statistics Canada have different objectives,” explains Julien Bérard-Chagnon, demographer at Statistics Canada.
“We don’t approach the issue of temporary residents in the same way. IRCC has data to evaluate and operate programs. We do demographics. Our goal is to know what the population of Quebec is, and in this population, there are non-permanent residents. We improve the IRCC data using demographic adjustments. So, that means there are some differences between the two sources.”
As a result, the two approaches do not give the same totals. Statistics Canada’s total of 600,000 non-permanent residents is significantly higher than IRCC’s data of 293,000 permit holders and 96,000 asylum seekers, for a total of 389,000!
There are several differences: Statistics Canada adds protected persons and related groups to asylum seekers, for example, and does not define the province of residence like IRCC. But a very big difference is the fact that Statistics Canada’s data includes families.
To return to the war of numbers between Quebec and Ottawa, the number of 600,000 temporary immigrants cited by Mr. Legault comes from Statistics Canada data, while that of 180,000 comes from IRCC statistics.
The problem is that the 420,000 people are not necessarily temporary immigrants who can be said to be in Quebec solely because of the federal government.
A prime example is the spouses and children of permit holders who do not themselves hold permits. They do not appear in IRCC statistics, but they are family members of workers or students admitted here with the agreement of the Quebec government, often as a result of its canvassing efforts. In many cases, their presence is a necessary condition for attracting candidates.
Can Quebec ask Ottawa to send home the families of the candidates it itself has chosen?
This same question arises for the many temporary workers who obtained an open work permit as spouses of students or temporary foreign workers, under IMP streams. To what extent are they “federal” temporary workers, since they accompany candidates from Quebec?
In the international mobility program, there are also post-graduation work permit holders. This represents 41,500 people, or 38.5% of the total of 107,000 PMI permit holders. The program is federal, but it is aimed at students selected by Quebec, who have studied here, who are graduates of a Quebec educational institution and who work in Quebec.