Because “temporary immigration has an impact on the language spoken in Quebec”, Minister Christine Fréchette is studying the possibility of imposing francization criteria among temporary workers. However, she will not submit this scenario during the consultations on immigration which begin Tuesday in Quebec.
“These are things that we are looking at,” said the elected representative of the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ), shortly before the opening of the commission on immigration planning in Quebec. for the period 2024-2027, Tuesday morning. “We are analyzing what levers we can have to ensure that temporary immigration contributes to the protection of French. »
Mme Fréchette will discuss it with her counterpart in Ottawa, Immigration Minister Marc Miller, “in the coming days,” she said. The Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) falls under the jurisdiction of the federal government.
Quebec presented two immigration threshold scenarios, one which maintains the status quo and another at 60,000 new arrivals per year. Last May, he also tightened the selection criteria for permanent immigrants, who must master French to settle in Quebec.
Asked about the possibilities of doing the same with the approximately 300,000 temporary immigrants who reside in Quebec, Prime Minister François Legault has already revealed his intentions. “There is still room to act. It will be in a second stage,” he said when presenting the government’s immigration reform in the spring.
Accommodation capacity
However, this hypothesis will not be studied during the parliamentary committee on multi-year immigration planning, which will sit for the next three weeks. The opposition groups were careful to point this out to the minister on Tuesday.
“The two scenarios that we have on the table do not include the absent scenario of temporary foreign workers,” raised the Liberal spokesperson on immigration, Monsef Derraji, at the start of the consultations.
“They don’t want to have this debate,” argued Parti Québécois MP Pascal Bérubé, who however did not want to indicate whether or not he wanted to reduce the reception levels of temporary immigrants. “We didn’t have these numbers during the election last year,” he said.
While in committee, the Union of Municipalities of Quebec (UMQ) agreed that the integration of immigrants could create issues in terms of housing, daycare services, transportation and health in the cities and regions of Quebec. “What we want is to be able to welcome, of course, immigration, but to be able to do it in a harmonious way,” said the second vice-president of the UMQ, Geneviève Dubois.
The organization asks to be involved “closely” in developing “reception capacity criteria” in collaboration with the Ministry of Immigration, Francisation and Integration.
Further details will follow.