There is no scientific consensus on reception capacity, an expression which resonates more and more often in Quebec. Throughout history and political ideologies, similar concepts have often been used to set limits on immigration and express discomfort, even hostility, say two political scientists and a historian.
“The concept is being brought up to date, it comes up cyclically in debates, but it is true that it is not necessarily new,” says Mireille Paquet, political scientist at Concordia University.
The reception capacity does not only belong to the mathematical domain, it rather oscillates between “discourses of opinion and dialogues that we would like to base on data”, according to her. Beyond the obsession with figures in recent years, it is also a way of “projecting a lot of insecurity in relation to immigration, without using less acceptable words or concepts in public discourse”.
It is above all an expression linked to emotion, according to the historian Pierre Anctil. “Often, perceptions, abstract notions are hidden under a rational term, but deep down, there is a negative emotion. » With the expressions around “welcome”, “we are looking for a way to declare our hostility without being hostile”, also underlines this professor emeritus from the University of Ottawa. Today there is an amalgamation of this ability with heavily loaded words, like “threat,” but this time it is focused primarily on language.
Historical
During the first decade of the 20th centurye century, the largest migratory wave unfolded in the country, and Montreal participated vigorously. More than two million people then arrived in Canada. Between 1911 and 1931, the proportion of immigrants in the population was 22%, and it will take almost a century (in 2021) to return to such a high percentage.
Non-Catholic and non-Christian communities are then perceived as “threatening”, explains Mr. Anctil, and one does not need to go very far to understand “this general hostility to any form of immigration”. This distrust is particularly expressed in THE Duty, and sometimes very virulently, as in the writings of director Georges Pelletier from 1913. The Jews were then described as “the waste of Europe” who “will harm us and who we will never succeed in assimilating”, says the historian. Even at the dawn of the Second World War and after, the elites and the population did not wish to receive the victims of the Nazi regime.
There is then no effort being made for francization or to intervene with immigrant populations in order to help them find a job or housing, “because essentially, we judged that it was impossible,” notes M. .Anctil. It was not until the Quiet Revolution, the creation of a provincial immigration ministry and Bill 101 that Quebec tried to find solutions. Once the “religious quotient is removed,” it becomes possible to become a Quebecer without having to convert. The overall situation of French has also improved, maintains the professor. You see this when you compare today’s statistics with those of the 1970s and 1980s, he says.
From concept to concept: absorption, integration, reception
But to arrive at the expression “carrying capacity”, we have to go back in time. This idea that the society, territory or government can accommodate a given volume of newcomers arose in the 1930s under the expression “ absorptive capacity “. It is mainly used by Mackenzie King, Prime Minister of Canada for three terms between 1921 and 1948, who seeks to justify limits placed on immigration.
But the term is then “vague and undefined” and takes into account births in addition to immigration, points out Catherine Xhardez, professor of political science at the University of Montreal. There is then no question of trying to do the accounting.
At the time, the expression was also very close discourses on the possibility or not of culturally “assimilating” large populations (see box). “In history, this concept of absorption capacity was based on ethnicity, on the capacity to absorb these non-Anglo-Saxon people into the culture, for example,” explains Mme Paquet, also scientific director of the Research Team on Immigration in Quebec and Elsewhere (ERIQA).
It was not until 1962 that Canada eliminated explicit racial criteria in its immigration policy. This then becomes even more fundamentally economic, even if it has already been seeking since the end of the 19the century to fill specific jobs. In these same years, the concept of “integration capacity” also gradually appeared, especially at work, in discourse. The ideal rate then depends on the power of the economy to provide jobs to immigrants current salaries.
In 2010, it was the turn of the Auditor General of Quebec to criticize the provincial immigration ministry for not using “socio-economic indicators to properly understand the real reception capacity” of the province. “You do not evaluate immigration programs and there is no follow-up,” the report basically said, according to Catherine Xhardez.
“Obviously, there is a whole field of evaluation of public policies,” she recalls about her discipline. Do immigrants have access to the same jobs as natives? Do they have the same prospects or the same quality of life? “There are programs that work very well and results on the ground. […] I believe in evaluation,” says the professor.
But the debate on reception capacity “seems to say something else”, namely that a calculation would make it possible to make a prediction, and not to evaluate past policies. “There are policies that work well, it must be said, there are results on the ground. But we also need to be able to evaluate systems that are not working and say: “We have invested here, but it is not producing results,” she explains.
The insistence on reception capacity “above all comes from our dream of saying: immigration is complicated, but maybe if we found the right formula, the right equation, it would be better,” explains Mireille Paquet.
In the scientific literature, nothing seems to indicate that a “magic threshold” exists or not, particularly with regard to the reaction of the population. ” THE backlashes or backfires, it’s not an absolute number at which people get angry,” notes Catherine Xhardez. It is rather the pace of arrival, the sudden increases, and above all their increased media coverage.
Politicization rather than calculation
Political parties play a big role in influencing and setting the terms of the debate, say these two specialists. Together, they studied the programs of political parties between 1991 and 2018. They concluded that the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) was an “agent of politicization” of immigration from 2012, when the party introduced the idea of reducing immigration levels.
The proposed reduction is 20%, so that these thresholds reflect “our reception and integration capacity”, it is included in its program.
As of 2018, the CAQ also criticizes the Liberal government for having “opened the door to a strong increase in temporary immigrants, without planning in any way for their reception and the impacts on language, housing or infrastructure.” These are the same criticisms that are now being leveled at the government, while non-permanent residents have reached record levels.
These same criticisms are now being addressed to them since the subject of temporary immigration has been catching up with the government for at least a year, with the number of non-permanent residents having reached records.
Is there a way out of politicization? Most of the experts consulted are uncertain about the possibility of calculating reception capacity. Should we calculate it over a year? Over 10 years? To what extent can indicators become objective? The recent call for research projects issued by the Department of Immigration may answer some of these questions, but for now neither Mme Xhardez ni Mme Paquet does not know of any researchers who have started.