François Legault is considering tightening the admission criteria for temporary foreign workers, whose number has increased significantly in recent years.
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“We are not excluding that, we are in the process of examining it,” said the Prime Minister on Thursday at the end of the caucus of CAQ deputies, who were gathered in Sherbrooke to prepare for the start of the parliamentary term.
The population of Quebec has crossed the threshold of nine million inhabitants, a jump which can be explained in particular by immigration.
There are more than 225,000 temporary foreign workers on Quebec soil. Not to mention asylum seekers and international students. The selection process for this category of immigrants is shared between Quebec and Ottawa.
The CAQ government could tighten the admission criteria that it controls. The Minister of Immigration is currently looking into the matter. “Christine Fréchette is looking at this,” confided François Legault.
Too much of immigrants temporary, says QS
Immigration is likely to be a hot topic this spring. All political parties addressed it during the caucus aimed at refining their strategy for the resumption of the political contest in Parliament.
Some have even revised their position in light of a recent report from the National Bank.
Even Québec solidaire now claims that this influx of temporary immigrants is creating pressure on housing and social services, so much so that Quebec’s reception capacity is now exceeded.
“If you ask us the question: is 500,000 too many? The answer is yes,” declared its parliamentary leader, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, on the sidelines of his political party’s caucus in Laval.
At the same time, Mr. Nadeau-Dubois adds, however, that Quebec needs these immigrants to fill needs in businesses and provide services to the population in the public network.
This is why QS is calling for the establishment of a committee of experts to establish how many immigrants Quebec can receive annually. “We may want to increase our reception capacity,” notes Mr. Nadeau-Dubois, who proposes a “major chore” in housing, like the program put in place in the 1980s, at a time when interest rates could exceed 20%.
Open the floodgates
In the PLQ, even if interim leader Marc Tanguay admitted that the large number of newcomers puts pressure on public services, we believe that Quebec will necessarily have to open the floodgates of immigration in the coming years.
“We will have no choice for our economy,” he said on Wednesday.
In caucus last week, the PQ instead announced that they could lower their immigration threshold.
Prime Minister François Legault sounded the alarm a few days ago in a letter addressed to his federal counterpart, Justin Trudeau, to order him to slow down the arrival of asylum seekers in the province.