Even if it wants to reduce their number by half, François Legault’s government will not reduce the social assistance granted to asylum seekers and will not pay them the bus fare to move to other provinces.
This is what the Prime Minister maintained on Wednesday after the daily The Press reported earlier in the morning that these two options were part of the measures that had been studied by the CAQ government to encourage asylum seekers to leave Quebec for elsewhere in Canada.
“This is not something that we are currently considering,” said Mr. Legault when intercepted by the parliamentary press before question period at the Salon rouge. “It is not on the table,” added his Minister of Immigration, Jean-François Roberge.
Without specifying which ones, Mr. Roberge assured Wednesday that his government was evaluating “lots of options” to reduce the number of people who requested asylum from 160,000 to 80,000 in Quebec. “What we are doing at the moment is working with Ottawa to reduce [le nombre de] asylum seekers,” he assured.
Last week, on mission to Paris, Prime Minister Legault loudly stated that he wanted to see half of the asylum seekers currently housed in Quebec leave quickly for the rest of Canada. This measure must be “obligatory”, he argued.
Since then, despite several notices from the federal government indicating that such an operation would not respect the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Mr. Legault continues to advocate for a compulsory transfer of these 80,000 immigrants. Tuesday, at the Salon rouge, he affirmed that it was possible to proceed “humanely”.
Further details will follow.
To watch on video