Perhaps tired of shouting its message to Ottawa without really being heard, the Quebec government put its money where its mouth is this week by announcing two measures intended to reduce the flow of temporary immigration. A six-month moratorium on the low-wage temporary foreign worker program in the Montreal area; and a bill designed to limit the number of foreign students per educational institution.
This strategy of small steps will not contribute to changing the trends much. But in this joust that Quebec and Ottawa are waging without results on the migration issue, this small gesture is a great symbol.
“The federal government never misses an opportunity to say that it is necessary that [le Québec] “sets an example,” explained Premier François Legault on Tuesday, flanked by his Minister of Immigration, Francisation and Integration, Christine Fréchette. Quebec has therefore decided to set an example. Responsible for 180,000 of the 600,000 temporary immigrants in Quebec, François Legault’s government has been trying for months to convince Ottawa to help it curb the number of immigrants, because, according to him, they are putting “enormous pressure” on public services, the housing crisis and the future of French in Montreal. The moratorium and the bill just announced are the example that Quebec is offering to the federal government, on which the other 420,000 immigrants depend.
The measures announced will not radically change the picture. Quebec concedes that the moratorium on the low-wage temporary foreign worker program (under $27.47 per hour) would only target 3,500 people in the targeted Montreal region, no more. As for the bill to better regulate the entry of foreign students into certain institutions, it seeks to reduce the flow represented by these 120,000 students, but we do not know by how much.
This symbolic gesture constitutes “a first step”. Whether or not it has significant mathematical repercussions, it once again confirms the encrustation of the immigration issue in the Quebec-Ottawa joust. It also reveals a certain bad faith: Quebec may well plead a national emergency today and place the burden of many ills on newcomers, but we do not have to go back very far in time to see that it itself contributed to the problem, and then knowingly chose to ignore its implications.
November 2021. The Duty Title: “Quebec wants to stimulate temporary immigration.” From the pen of our specialist journalist Sarah R. Champagne, a first sentence that speaks for itself: “Quebec is urging Ottawa to remove the ceilings on temporary immigration.” Less than three years ago, the urgency was quite different: it was a question of raising the thresholds for temporary foreign workers in 71 low-wage trades and professions.
Times have changed. The figures confirm that, from 2021 to 2024, temporary migrants increased from 300,000 to 600,000. An “explosion” that the system cannot handle, argues the Prime Minister. “It hurts our public services [éducation et santé]it hurts our housing crisis, it hurts the future of French.” Even though he wants to be as “factual” as possible, the Prime Minister of Quebec uses a rhetoric that is at the very least slippery by suggesting that the bottlenecks our system is experiencing are the fault of newcomers. This is regrettable. “I know that some people are shocked when I say this, but it is factual.”
The government is right to act so as not to aggravate an already tense situation. It is also right to whip Ottawa to get a little more support on this issue — regulating the number of asylum seekers and a better distribution of their entry into Canadian territory, with Quebec currently hosting more than half of them. But it is very questionable to put everything on the shoulders of the federal government without conceding its own share of responsibility.
Where was the sense of urgency and the intolerable pressure on public systems when, in the spring of 2023, in the middle of studying her own department’s appropriations, Minister Fréchette chose to reject the opposition’s request to extend the discussion on immigration in Quebec to temporary workers, foreign students and asylum seekers, preferring to limit herself to permanent immigration only? Where is the concern for the future of French in Montreal when we know that demand is exploding for francization, a sign of a desire for integration, but that budgets and supply are decreasing? Why did you refuse to name the housing crisis when there was still time to act to mitigate its effects?
Beware of catastrophic flights of fancy that could place (too) much of a burden on the shoulders of those most concerned. They are guilty of nothing other than wanting to know if life was good in Quebec. The immigration issue requires that we approach it with frankness, lucidity, kindness and moderation.