In terms of immigration, it is the round of figures that has invited itself into the electoral campaign. Three parties—Québec solidaire, the Parti Québécois and the Conservative Party of Quebec—have specified the immigration thresholds they advocate, while the Coalition avenir Québec and the Liberal Party of Quebec have confirmed the position they have already made known.
On the side of the CAQ, François Legault did not lie his campaign slogan “Let’s continue”. Unsurprisingly, the CAQ leader reiterated that the government he would form would stick to the number of some 50,000 immigrants per year. Despite his closeness to the business world, he does not intend to give in to the lobby of the Conseil du patronat du Québec, which is demanding that this threshold be increased to 80,000 during the next mandate and to 100,000 thereafter.
It is paradoxically QS that comes closest to employers’ preferences by proposing a maximum target of 80,000 immigrants per year. The PLQ is not very far, advancing the figure of 70,000 in order to counter labor shortages.
At the other end of the spectrum, the PQ proposes reducing the threshold to 35,000, the one that prevailed before Jean Charest’s regime, noting that the decline of French began when the number of immigrants admitted fell to 50,000 per year. The PQ has the merit of pointing out the issue of temporary immigration, in particular the influx of foreign students in English-speaking universities, a phenomenon encouraged by Ottawa which blocks the entry of French-speaking African students into our CEGEPs and universities.
With a high threshold, QS claims to take the side of virtue, in communion with the Trudeau government’s expansionist migration policy and its post-national vision. The greater the number of immigrants that a party promises to welcome, the more it can claim to promote openness to what is known as diversity. The greatness of soul would be a function of the size of the number.
If immigration must be part of the means to meet the shortages of workers from which companies are suffering in particular, it increases the demand for labor for the economy as a whole. We need only look at the situation in Ontario and listen to its premier, Doug Ford, complain about the labor shortage, even if the province, cheerfully participating in the federal policy of soon welcoming 451,000 immigrants per year, receives four times more than Quebec.
In terms of enrichment, economists who have studied the question have concluded that, although immigration necessarily makes the economy grow, it has little effect on people’s standard of living; it has little influence on gross domestic product per capita. These studies give reason to François Legault, who recalled the enviable fate of small countries like Switzerland, Sweden or Denmark. It would be illusory to try to follow the example of Canada, whose common sense of its migratory frenzy can be doubted. Even if this policy, to which Quebec has not subscribed, has the effect of reducing its demographic and political weight within the federation, the frog that we are has no interest in becoming bigger than the ox. And we will see what collective reflection this harmful development will lead us to.
The merits of immigration at a sustainable level do not rest on economic arguments. Humanitarian considerations come into play, but it is above all a question of continuing the adventure of the Quebec nation with people from elsewhere who want to take part in it, and thus enrich it. It’s a way to promote Quebec from within, so to speak, to showcase its culture, its society, in French. The question is whether this flourishing is possible in the Canadian context or whether it is folkloric insignificance and slow assimilation that await us.