Quebec is giving up on the immediate increase in immigration thresholds. In order to protect the vitality of French, François Legault’s government will maintain its targets at 50,000 new arrivals per year until 2025, but says nothing about the future.
This is what was announced on Wednesday by Minister Christine Fréchette, in her multi-year planning document for 2024-2025.
Temporary immigrants – with the exception of agricultural workers – will also be subject to French language requirements when renewing their work permit.
Multi-year immigration planning is the result of consultation work initiated in September at the National Assembly, and which originally covered the period 2024-2027. However, nothing in the documents filed on Wednesday mentions the years 2026 and 2027.
Last spring, Ms. Fréchette announced in a large-scale conference that she would put two scenarios under study. One of them, which increased the target in 2027 to 60,000 immigrants, broke with François Legault’s assertion during the electoral campaign that raising the thresholds would be “a little suicidal” for the status of French in Quebec.
“The federal government is open to only increasing economic immigration, which we control,” replied the Prime Minister when questioned about this apparent shift.
Apart from the Parti Québécois (35,000), the Coalition Avenir Québec is the political group which proposed the lowest immigration thresholds during the last electoral campaign. The Liberal Party of Quebec (70,000) and Québec solidaire (60,000 to 80,000) encouraged him to revise them upwards.
The French language commissioner, Benoit Dubreuil, has since urged the government to exercise caution before raising its immigration levels. The Quebec Employers’ Council had described the threshold of 60,000 people as a “floor”.
This does not include temporary immigrants. Last July, there were nearly 471,000 in Quebec. Ms. Fréchette’s consultations, however, did not address their reality. In recent months, all opposition parties have criticized him for hiding a significant portion of Quebec immigration.
In September, the Minister of Immigration suggested that she could impose French language requirements on temporary workers.
Further details will follow.