Immigration | Quebec is heading towards “an unprecedented social crisis,” says PSPP

The Legault government and the Parti Québécois clashed again on Sunday, through the media, on the question of immigration thresholds. The PQ leader affirms that an “unprecedented social crisis” awaits Quebec due to the unprecedented number of foreigners established in the province.

In a long message published on his Facebook account on Sunday, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon claims to want to denounce the “hypocrisy” of some of the “media and business elites” who would avoid “naming these findings”.

“Housing crisis, French crisis, crisis in essential services”, the reception of an unprecedented number of permanent and temporary immigrants raises fears of a three-pronged catastrophe, he says.

He first points to the new threshold of 64,600 permanent immigrants for next year, announced this week by the Minister of Immigration, Christine Fréchette. An “obvious breach of an electoral promise which had been played out in broad strokes”, according to him, while the Prime Minister, François Legault, had affirmed during the campaign that a “Louisanization” awaited Quebec beyond a threshold of 50,000 permanent immigrants.

Then, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon is concerned about the unprecedented number of temporary immigrants established in Quebec – there are now nearly 466,000 on Quebec territory – whose “concrete impact is the strangulation of household finances”.

However, if the increase in thresholds made it possible to resolve the labor shortage, according to many, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon affirms that there is no data in this sense and that this theory has been denied “by many economists.

Thus, “by bringing in a new worker, we also bring in a consumer, who will have needs like the rest of the population,” he says.

The Legault government responds

The Parti Québécois advocates for a reduction in the thresholds for permanent immigrants and for the sovereignty of Quebec, “in order to have its own policies in favor of its linguistic and cultural reality”.

“There is no link between the number of people we wish to welcome and our level of openness,” concludes Paul St-Pierre Plamondon.

In a publication on the social network

Without addressing the question of the number of permanent immigrants that Quebec is preparing to welcome, she affirms that “we ensure that those who come contribute fully to our society, while mastering our common language.”

On the subject of asylum seekers, Christine Fréchette reiterates her party’s position, namely a better distribution of them across the other provinces and reimbursement by Ottawa of the sums dedicated to their reception. Quebec also wants the federal government to issue work permits dedicated to asylum seekers more quickly and to review its visa management.