While Prime Minister Françoise Legault insists that there are too many temporary immigrants, the Minister of Immigration, Christine Fréchette, denies wanting to send foreign workers home. Without advancing on a “freeze”, the minister, who recognizes that it is necessary to reduce the number of non-permanent residents, recalled that an analysis is underway to determine how the use of temporary workers could be braked.
“Our ambition is not to end the work permits of people already here. We are respectful of [entrepreneurs] here engaged in a recruitment process and who already have temporary foreign workers at home,” she said in response to the question from Liberal MP André A. Morin, who asked her how many workers she would “fire “.
Without denying that her government is analyzing how it will carry out attrition, the minister said she wanted to preserve the more sensitive sectors, such as health, education and construction. “ [L’idée] it is about going about it in a methodical and responsible manner, which ensures that we take into account the reality of businesses and regions. »
According to her, there will be no “CAQ freeze”, i.e. Quebec Acceptance Certificates granted to people, students or workers, holding a temporary visa. As of January 31, the Quebec government had issued 164,000 CAQs, including 134,000 to foreign students. Christine Fréchette wanted to point out that the federal government controls a large part of temporary visas.
“Inconsistency”
Without wanting to advance on a specific game plan, the Minister of Immigration, Francisation and Integration (MIFI) nevertheless cited as an example the measures put in place by her federal counterpart Marc Miller, including that of reduce the validity period of the Labor Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) to six months and reduce the quota of foreign workers within the same company from 30% to 20%. “Will there be a certain number of these co-payments that we can put in place to generally reduce the number of foreign workers? This is an orientation which characterizes our analyzes and for which I cannot give an answer because they are in progress,” indicated the minister. The chosen measures could be implemented gradually to test their impact on the labor market. “We have to see how the pudding will react,” she added.
According to Mme Fréchette, there might be reason to invest more in technologies so that Quebec and Canada can catch up in terms of productivity. “There are sectors for which we think that increasing productivity could be the real solution rather than resorting to temporary foreign workers. »
The member for Québec solidaire, Guillaume Cliche-Rivard, raised the “inconsistency” of the government which claims that its “reception capacity is exceeded”, while ten million dollars were spent on international recruitment. For the minister, it is the massive arrival of asylum seekers in the last year that has changed the situation. And, she clarified, international missions, which recruit around 3,000 to 4,000 immigrants annually, meet very specific needs of the job market, particularly in health. “When we say that there are more than 560,000 temporary immigrants, we are talking about something that is on the margins. »
Quebec is not preparing a referendum on immigration
Considerable delays
Hot on his heels by Mr. Cliche-Rivard on the long waiting times before obtaining permanent residence, Minister Fréchette recognized that the delays are “considerable”. Quoting The duty which revealed that the wait was 25 years in the humanitarian category, due to the low annual admission thresholds of Quebec, the member for Saint-Henri-Saint-Anne asked him if this wait, which concerns in particular a good number of ‘Ukrainians, was reasonable. “For the humanitarian category, the delays are really very long,” admitted the minister. “ [L’an prochain], we will have to define the orientations again for subsequent years, so we will see if there will be different orientations for the year 2024-2025. » She also did not deny the long delays of at least ten years for asylum seekers who have been recognized as refugees by the federal government.
Long wait before being able to study French, mix-ups in the course offerings… Liberal MP André A. Morin brandished the failures of Francisation Québec launched on 1er last June and reported by The duty. In certain regions of Quebec, including Montérégie, the waiting time exceeds the service standard of 45 working days and can reach nearly three months. “The government starts communicating with immigrants only in French six months after their arrival, how do you think […] that a person can learn French in the period they have left? », argued the MP.
According to Minister Fréchette, with 62,000 people took French courses (full or part time) between 1er April 2023 and January 31, 2024, the equivalent of a “Francization university” was created. “I agree there are waiting times, the demand is beyond what we had imagined,” she underlined, specifying that the service is working hard to meet needs.
Questioned about the success rates by the PQ MP, Pascal Bérubé, the minister was happy to announce that it had increased from 64% in 2022-2023 to 68% as of January 31, 2024. The ministry’s target was set at 71 %.