The Trudeau government would like Quebec to raise its immigration thresholds so that they come closer to Canadian targets, since Ottawa intends to welcome a record number of immigrants over the next few years.
In an interview with Duty On Wednesday, the new federal Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, Sean Fraser, wanted to encourage Quebec to increase the number of immigrants it receives. “I believe that Quebec is aware of the need to resort to immigration to ensure that companies find workers,” he declared.
Just before Justin Trudeau’s Liberals came to power in 2015, the number of immigrants admitted to Canada under the Harper government ranged from 250,000 to 260,000 per year. In 2019, before the pandemic, this number had risen to 341,000. After falling to 184,000 immigrants in 2020 due to the pandemic, the thresholds are rising again to reach 401,000 this year, 411,000 in 2022 and 421,000 in 2023. These latest numbers do allow for some catching up, but the intention is to become the most ambitious Canadian government of all time on immigration, as Minister Fraser has pointed out.
In English Canada, the Century Initiative is trying to convince the Trudeau government to gradually admit more and more immigrants to reach 500,000 by 2026, with the ultimate goal of increasing the Canadian population from 38.5 million to 100 million by 2100. Canada would be stronger and would have more influence on the world level, argues this pressure group, Canadians would be richer, the coffers of the state would be better filled, the shortages of manpower. work would be a bad memory and the aging of the population would be stopped.
These representatives of the English-Canadian intelligentsia are not the only ones who believe that the unbridled admission of immigrants will help increase the country’s wealth and reduce the aging of the population. This is what the business community is generally speaking about.
However, as researchers Parisa Mahboubi and Bill Robson, from the CD Howe Institute, cited by economist Pierre Fortin, have shown, the effect of immigration on the aging of the population is marginal. Rather, it is the increased participation of workers aged 60 and over, as in Japan, for example, that is most likely to reduce the effects of aging on the labor market and public finances.
In Ottawa, they do not hesitate to link immigration to an increase in the country’s wealth. In this regard, we must not forget that it is not the size of the pie that matters, but the size of the portion that goes to each. In other words, it’s the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita that you have to worry about. Thus, the Dutch, whose country receives relatively few immigrants, are richer than the Germans, who admitted more. There is no correlation.
As for the idea that strong immigration would relieve labor shortages, it is “a pure fallacy”, says Pierre Fortin. Immigration increases the labor pool, but also the number of consumers of trade goods and services and public services. Certainly, careful selection of immigrants can help fill high-demand skilled worker positions. But all-out raising immigration thresholds as the Trudeau government envisions may increase unemployment among newcomers.
The question of the housing shortage is beginning to arise in earnest. As the majority of immigrants settle in large urban centers, there is untenable pressure on the real estate market, as can be seen in Toronto, Vancouver and, to a lesser extent, Montreal.
This is without taking into account the very specific situation in Quebec. The Trudeau government’s immigration policy ignores the demographic weight of the federation’s only French-speaking majority state. If we had to follow the pace imposed by Ottawa, which is moreover without debate, it is not 50,000 immigrants a year that Quebec should welcome, but 95,000 and more, an impossibility. Already, there are not enough immigrants who choose to live in French in Quebec. In the rest of Canada, this is not an issue: all newcomers, regardless of their mother tongue, end up speaking English and living in English. Including francophones, by the way.
This immigration policy, driven by a multiculturalist and post-national impetus, does not suit Quebec, which will no longer be able to be satisfied with half-powers in immigration matters for very long.