Quebec is the Canadian province most open to temporary foreign workers (TFWs), according to a recent survey by the Angus Reid Institute.
What you need to know
Quebec is more open than other provinces to temporary foreign workers, according to an Angus Reid poll.
44% of Quebecers think that there are not enough temporary foreign workers in the country or just enough.
In Ontario, this percentage is significantly lower, at 23%.
Overall, 42% of Quebecers believe that there are too many temporary foreign workers in the country, much fewer than in Ontario (61%) or Alberta (65%).
Conversely, 44% of people in Quebec find that there are “not enough” or “the right number”, compared to 23% in Ontario and 19% in Alberta.
These results may be surprising when we know that the favour of Quebec voters goes mainly to two parties which advocate a marked reduction in temporary immigration, the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) and the Parti québécois (PQ).
The Press asked the new Minister of Immigration, Jean-François Roberge, if he believed that his government had convinced a majority of Quebecers that there are too many temporary foreign workers in Canada.
“The number of temporary workers in Quebec poses serious problems in education, housing and health,” he responded in a press scrum on Tuesday.
“I think that a large majority of Quebecers are aware of this. But it also needs to be explained. Sometimes, these are big numbers thrown out by politicians, read in the newspapers, people may not see the impacts directly on the ground,” added the minister.
A positive impact
Daye Diallo, vice-president of labour policies and economic intelligence at the Quebec Employers Council, has another explanation.
“It may be a question of understanding the issues,” he suggests.
“Quebec is one of the places in Canada where we have had the most debates on immigration. It is a recurring subject in society compared to the rest of Canada. And it can help people understand a little better the impact of these programs on the population.”
Quebecers know that we have temporary foreign workers here. We meet them in factories and grocery stores, in our health care system and our education system. We see their positive impact in our daily lives.
Daye Diallo, Vice President of Labor Policies and Economic Intelligence at the Quebec Employers Council
There are proportionally more TFWP workers in Quebec than elsewhere in Canada. There were 59,820 in 2023, more than the 45,320 in Ontario.
Quebec has 31% of all PTET workers, which is more than its demographic weight.
Good for the country’s economy
Still according to this survey, 64% of Quebecers believe that this program is good for the Canadian economy, much more than Ontarians (35%) or Albertans (30%).
Quebecers also agree more, at 80%, with the statement that temporary workers are doing jobs that Canadians don’t want, a proposition that only garners 54% approval in Ontario, and 61% across the country.
This more positive attitude could be explained by the fact that, since Quebec’s unemployment rate is among the lowest in Canada and the rate of vacant positions is among the highest, Quebecers are more aware of the role that temporary workers can play in alleviating shortages.
They are also more numerous to think that these workers are well treated by their employers: 36% in Quebec, compared to 23% in Canada as a whole.
However, there is one point on which Quebecers and other Canadians agree: access to citizenship.
The desire to offer a path to citizenship to all temporary workers is low, with only 36% in favor, across Canada, including Quebec.
Reforms
A series of survey questions aimed to gauge Canadians’ opinions on the TFWP and the permit reduction measures recently announced by the federal government.
When respondents were asked if they were familiar with the PTET, only 27% of Quebecers said yes (5% very familiar, 22% who had read about it), much less than the 62% of Ontarians, the 59% of British Columbians or the 68% of residents of the Atlantic provinces.
However, it is understandable that Quebecers were not very familiar with federal reforms.
In Quebec, the PTET is managed jointly by the provincial and federal governments, while it is a federal responsibility in the other provinces.
However, what caught the attention in Quebec were the changes to the rules of the TFWP announced on August 20 by Premier François Legault, which only applied to the island of Montreal: a six-month moratorium on the low-wage jobs component in certain sectors.
The changes announced by Ottawa on August 26, which are the subject of the Angus Reid poll, do not apply to Quebec and have therefore not generated much interest: a freeze on low-wage positions in urban areas where the unemployment rate exceeds 6%, and a reduction, from 20% to 10%, of the maximum proportion of workers in a company’s workforce. These new rules will come into effect on September 26.
With Tommy Chouinard, The Press