Urged to increase the number of people who can ultimately obtain permanent residence in the family reunification category, Quebec will instead limit in advance the number of applications it processes. According to a decree published in The Official Gazettea maximum of 13,000 sponsorship applications, received on a first-come, first-served basis, can be processed over the next two years, approximately half the annual average for 2022 and 2023.
“All requests received after the maximum number of requests has been reached will be returned. […] without the examination fees being collected,” writes the Ministry of Immigration, Francisation and Integration (MIFI) on its website.
This decision comes at a time when the federal and provincial governments are under pressure from all sides, including through legal proceedings, to reduce file processing times – which are 34 months to bring a spouse to Quebec, compared to 24 months. in the rest of Canada — and reduce the inventory of 40,000 people waiting. Immigration lawyers and family support groups denounce this solution, which only changes the place of the problem.
“A measure like that is far from helping families,” laments Laurianne Lachapelle, activist from the Quebec Reunified support group who filed a request almost two years ago to sponsor her spouse, who is Guatemalan. “I find it extremely distressing, when we are trying to get the cooperation of the minister [de l’Immigration du Québec], Christine Fréchette. »
First submitted to Immigration Canada, the applications are then submitted to the MIFI, to obtain the Quebec selection certificate (CSQ), before returning to the federal government pile. Mme Lachapelle believes that the refusal of the MIFI to process files and grant CSQs will lead to the closure of the files by Ottawa. “We have been denouncing this injustice in a category of humanitarian immigration for a long time, and it is bad faith to take a measure that will further increase delays. It’s already difficult to be separated from a family member for a year, imagine three or four more years. It’s despicable. »
A letter from Miller that gets things moving
Last spring, the federal Minister of Immigration, Marc Miller, threatened to ignore the immigration thresholds imposed by Quebec and to finish processing in three years all the applications having obtained a CSQ which were dormant in the inventory. In a letter written to his counterpart, he argued that Quebec could not, on the one hand, cap the number of people who can obtain permanent residence in this category at 10,000, and, on the other, issue CSQs for family reunification without reservation. As an indication, around 30,000 CSQs were granted in 2022 and 2023, which is well beyond the 13,000 over two years that the MIFI now wishes to grant. According to Minister Miller, it was necessary to address this disparity between the low threshold and the large number of CSQs issued, responsible for the lengthening of deadlines.
This initially sparked the ire of the Legault government, but since then, meetings between officials from both levels of government have led to an agreement being reached, the Immigration Minister’s office said. The goal now is “to adjust the number of CSQs to be issued during this period.”
“This decision is part of the Minister’s desire to ensure that the planned admission targets for family reunification are respected,” Ms.me Fréchette, in a long, rather technical response.
Immigration lawyer Maxime Lapointe, who led a lawsuit against Minister Fréchette in the winter, this decision constitutes a “big setback”. “That doesn’t solve the 40,000 people in the inventory,” he said, explaining that it will only change place. The files will no longer accumulate on the federal desk, but rather will be controlled upstream, by Quebec, which will process a smaller number. “It will still last several years. We are just stretching the congestion of the entire program over time. »
Just politics
According to him, the Legault government could have increased its thresholds, but it chose to limit the CSQ in order to respect an immigration target. “This is a clear demonstration of Quebec’s determination to maintain immigration levels at 50,000,” he said. It’s just politics at that level. »
About two weeks ago, a mandamus suit was filed against the federal Minister of Immigration. Helped by the Quebec Association of Immigration Lawyers, eight couples decided to force Marc Miller to have family reunification applications from Quebec processed within the same deadlines as those filed elsewhere in Canada.
Christine Fréchette was also prosecuted because her threshold was too low in the family reunification category, which lengthened processing times. The action was, however, abandoned because the principal plaintiff had his situation resolved.