From the third link to immigration

To appreciate the new policy of the Legault government in immigration, it is necessary to do as for the third link: not to think of all that has been said before and to rejoice that in the end, we have made the right decision.

But before forgetting completely, it is necessary to make a rather long, but necessary historical detour.

Because it must be remembered, François Legault made not one, but two electoral campaigns on the back of immigration. And what is therefore rather staggering in the new policy of his government, it is not so much what it contains as the fact that it is in such flagrant contradiction with what the Prime Minister said in the campaign.

Before coming to power in 2018, Mr. Legault already announced that he was going to slash the immigration thresholds by 20%. His main argument then was on the level of values. He talked about possible female teachers wearing the chador in Quebec schools and promised to introduce a values ​​test to assess newcomers.

We are still looking for the teacher wearing the chador, but we know that the success rate in the values ​​test is 99.93%; in short, it was and remains totally useless, although it is not very vexatious for those who must submit to it.

By the way, during this election campaign, Mr. Legault himself would not have passed a minimum test of immigration knowledge: he did not even know how long he had to spend in the country to obtain citizenship.

Last fall, Mr. Legault counted above all on the survival of French. Raising immigration thresholds, even a little, would be “suicidal” for the Quebec nation, he said. For several months, we were going to play on the heaviest identity fears: “Louisianization”, assimilation, the fear of disappearing, etc.

Mr. Legault even had his Don Quixote phase, when he tackled the windmills of family reunification, considering it a factor of anglicization, among other things because it comes under the federal government. The argument had little effect because, as Federal Minister Pablo Rodriguez said: “It’s about love, not French”.

But that did not prevent the Prime Minister from running an election campaign demanding a strong mandate to repatriate all immigration powers from the federal government. And to repeat whenever he could that 50,000 immigrants per year was a maximum and that going beyond that would exceed the “reception capacity” of Quebec society.

Mr. Legault had a ready answer on the subject of any overrun, namely that “from the moment we are able […] to say that the increase is only for Francophones, that completely changes the situation”. The only problem is that the Government of Quebec already had all the powers to do so – under the 1991 agreement with the federal government – ​​and it did not.

Especially since, when we look at the government’s figures, we see that the situation was not as dramatic for French as claimed. Thus, among economic immigrants, those chosen by Quebec, 88% already know French. We want to increase this proportion to 96% in 2027, but in absolute numbers, it’s about 5,000 people in all, which won’t upset the linguistic balance.

But the important thing is that the government has changed course and now has a clear and coherent policy that no longer sees immigration as a threat, but rather as part of the solution. For the French as well as for the labor shortage.

But the policy of the Minister of Immigration, Francisation and Integration, Christine Fréchette, goes further than the old thresholds. It opens the door to a substantial increase in the number of immigrants by excluding foreign students in Quebec institutions from the quota of 50,000 newcomers.

These students who already speak French and will have a diploma from a Quebec institution are, indeed, ideal candidates for permanent residence and citizenship. This is what leads informed observers of immigration to say that we could eventually arrive at rates of 60,000, or even 70,000 immigrants per year.

The fact remains that after years when the government of the Coalition avenir Québec had an immigration policy that consisted of trying to manage a problem, we now have a coherent policy that would like to be part of the solution. The change is major and welcome.

Not everything is perfect and there are still things to be sorted out. The temporary residents file – which comes under Ottawa – and the regionalization of immigration, for example.

For me^me Fréchette is a great success, especially when you know that you had to convince your Prime Minister to “step on the paint”, which is not his habit.

But we will certainly not complain about it and we will not hide its pleasure in seeing this government be open to changing its mind when it is also justified and even necessary.