Who stung François Legault? On mission to Paris this week, the Prime Minister made, day after day, feverish declarations about asylum seekers, placing all the blame on Ottawa.
This is practical to divert attention from the problems which pushed François Legault to a peak of unpopularity, according to the most recent Pallas poll. Since the start of the school year, we have been wondering if he has not lost his calculator, in addition to the compass that he admitted to having misplaced last year.
The subsidies to Northvolt and the Kings are all the more raising eyebrows as the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) is increasing budgetary restrictions to absorb the record deficit of 11 billion. All this while centralizing reforms have failed to improve services to the population.
In this difficult context, asylum seekers, who do not vote, constitute a convenient scapegoat, a scarecrow that can be waved at no political cost.
This is how François Legault is asking Ottawa to detain asylum seekers in “waiting zones” and to force half of those in Quebec to settle elsewhere.
Oh my! Let’s stay calm.
It is not by portraying asylum seekers as a nuisance who must be kept in detention centers or outright kicked out that we will convince the other provinces to provide their share of efforts.
It is true that Quebec welcomes twice as many asylum seekers as the other provinces, all things considered. Statistics Canada counts 163,000 in Quebec, or 41% of the Canadian total, while the province only represents 22% of the population.
It must also be recognized that the number of asylum seekers has doubled in Quebec over the past two years, despite the closure of Roxham Road in March 2023.
Canada may be geographically isolated, but it is not immune to the global wave of refugees, fueled by wars and conflicts. This flow is creating tensions all over the world. But it is not by excessively politicizing immigration or by launching radical and unrealistic solutions that we will calm the situation.
We understand the impatience of François Legault who has been calling for better distribution for six months, without result.
But the idea of forcibly transferring half of the asylum seekers who are already settled in Quebec – many have a job, family and a network that supports them – would be contrary to all our traditions of free movement across the country and would certainly open the door to a challenge under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
We would also be on the wrong track by importing the concept of French-style “waiting zones”, where asylum seekers are held until 20 days after their arrival.
Read “What does the French model that Quebec wants to draw inspiration from looks like?” »
There are already “monitoring centers” in Canada, but asylum seekers are detained there in rare situations (identification or security issues, for example). Extending such a system to all applicants would require a gigantic detention infrastructure which ultimately would not change much.
Instead, Ottawa should speed up the Immigration and Refugee Board process, which takes about two years to determine whether the applicant will be entitled to refugee status. Year after year, only 63% of files are accepted (not counting the possibilities of appeal).
This delay has a financial cost for the government which must provide certain services in the meantime (social assistance, health, school, etc.), but also a human cost for asylum seekers who have time to integrate into the system. Quebec, which makes their refusal even more painful.
Ottawa should therefore speed up the pace so that we can be fixed as quickly as possible. Especially since asylum requests are likely to increase as the government tightens temporary immigration, as it has announced. Already, nearly 40% of asylum applications are filed by people who are in Canada, students or foreign workers who request refugee status, before their visa expires.
But Quebec should also step up the pace, instead of imposing quotas that reduce the number of people who can obtain permanent residence, even if they have obtained their refugee status. At this point, it should just be a formality.
Last year, only 5,435 refugees accepted in Quebec obtained permanent residence, or 7% of the Canadian total. However, the Canada-Quebec Agreement which governs immigration stipulates that Quebec must welcome a percentage of refugees at least equal to its demographic weight, in order to assume its share of responsibility in humanitarian matters.
But instead, Quebec is creating an artificial bottleneck that leaves some 30,000 people with refugee status in the waiting room. At the current rate, it will take them more than five years to obtain permanent residency.
And François Legault would like to establish a “waiting zone”? No need, there is already one!
But it is not with artificial pitfalls that we will solve the problems. Nor with a war of shock declarations. Washing our dirty laundry in Paris is not chic.