(Montreal) The letter sent in recent days by the Prime Minister of Quebec, François Legault, to his federal counterpart, Justin Trudeau, to implore him to curb the influx of asylum seekers, is welcomed favorably by Liberal government ministers.
“I found Mr. Legault’s letter, we found it very constructive, also very useful. Now, it’s up to us to find common solutions,” Pablo Rodriguez, Mr. Trudeau’s lieutenant for Quebec, said on Sunday upon his arrival at the cabinet retreat, which is being held in Montreal until Tuesday.
In his missive, Premier Legault asserts that the number of asylum seekers arriving in Quebec is “excessive” and that the situation has become “unsustainable” so much so that the province is on the verge of reaching its “breaking point “.
He called for a “fair” distribution of asylum seekers throughout Canada and said he expected Ottawa to reimburse the 470 million incurred for welcoming asylum seekers in 2021 and 2022, and that he does the same for subsequent years.
On Friday, data published by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada confirmed that Quebec received 65,570 asylum applications in 2023, or 45.5% of all those received in the country, while the demographic weight of the province is 22 .1%.
Asked to say what concrete measures will be taken, the federal Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, Dominic LeBlanc, affirmed on Sunday that he will “continue these discussions” with Quebec and “take necessary measures” in order, in particular, to “secure our borders.
“Quebec has done a lot to welcome immigrants and asylum seekers,” he declared. We understand that this brings up a financial question. This is why we have for five, six years been a partner for Quebec in terms of costs as well. »
On Radio-Canada earlier in the day, Mr. LeBlanc mentioned that Ottawa intends to carry out “appropriate accounting” in terms of financial requests.
In the calculations, Minister Rodriguez suggested during a press scrum that he deducted “around 70 million” that Ottawa transferred for housing. “We continue to discuss the rest,” he said.
According to Mr. Rodriguez, the government must focus on the pressures exerted by foreign students and temporary workers.
Justin Trudeau, for his part, did not stop on Sunday to answer journalists’ questions on the subject, contenting himself with saying “it’s a pleasure to see you at my place” as they prepared to have dinner with his team .
On social networks, Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet added on Sunday that Canadian immigration policy is “unsustainable”.
“Imagine that these hundreds of thousands of people will find jobs corresponding to the needs of the economy without additional qualifications, that the health or education or childcare systems, the housing stock and security resources will naturally follow is simply incorrect. Not to mention Frenchification,” he wrote.
The federal government has decided to increase the number of permanent residents that Canada will welcome to 500,000 in 2025, almost double the 2015 threshold.
And while an increasingly clear link is being drawn by several elected officials between immigration and the housing crisis, ministers Marc Miller and Sean Fraser have indicated in recent days that Ottawa is strives to stabilize the number of people entering the country each year.