Despite the federal government’s intention to accommodate 500,000 immigrants per year starting in 2025, the Legault government does not flinch. It intends to limit the number of newcomers who can settle in the province to 50,000.
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Yesterday, federal Immigration Minister Sean Fraser unveiled a three-year immigration plan that calls for welcoming 500,000 new permanent residents a year to the country starting in 2025.
If the distribution were done proportionally, this would represent 100,000 economic immigrants per year in Quebec, double its current target, set at 50,000.
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“Already at 400,000, there was a problem, so at 500,000 even more,” commented the Prime Minister on his arrival at his office on Wednesday morning.
François Legault says he understands that there are economic objectives to raising immigration thresholds, but he argues that Quebec has the “special challenge” to protect and promote French.
“Already at 50,000, it is difficult to stop the decline of French,” he remarked.
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The prime minister also pointed out that during the last election campaign, the party proposing the highest immigrant threshold set it at 80,000.
“There, if you do a little calculation, 23% of 500,000, we would be almost double what (proposed) the party which offers the most”, launched the Prime Minister.
“Really there, Mr. Trudeau, Mr. Rodriguez, and the people in Ottawa will have to understand that we have a challenge here and that we want to keep French in the long term,” concluded François Legault.
Demographic weight
When she entered the Council of Ministers, the new Minister of Immigration, Christine Fréchette, expressed that Quebec retains the power to set the number of immigrants it receives each year, and that it is imperative to respect ” the reception capacity” of the province.
“We have a reception capacity that means that we can receive 50,000 permanent immigrants a year,” she said.
However, such a gap between the Canadian threshold and the Quebec threshold would risk accelerating the fall in the demographic weight of Quebec in the Canadian federation.
François Legault assures that “safeguards” exist. “The percentage of MPs in total granted to Quebec is already a little higher than the percentage of the population. We have to keep that,” he said.
His minister, however, admitted that the government is relying on this issue “on a commitment by the Prime Minister of Canada on this need to ensure stable representation of Quebec in the House of Commons.” She also argued that the oppositions, at the federal level, agree on the issue, and that this is “reassuring”.