(Quebec) The CAQ government says it is surprised by the nearly 50% increase in the number of temporary immigrants in Quebec and is demanding “awareness” from the federal government about the country’s reception capacity.
Statistics Canada revealed Wednesday that there were nearly 471,000 non-permanent residents in Quebec in July, compared to 322,000 in the same month last year (+46%): this includes both asylum seekers (146,723) and license holders and their family members (324,253).
“I am still surprised to see the extent of the changes,” admitted the Minister of Immigration, Christine Fréchette, in a press scrum on Wednesday, after the Council of Ministers session.
The one who is currently leading consultations on immigration planning from 2024 to 2027 said that these figures “are a game-changer” on “the state of the situation”, without however announcing any changes.
Incidentally, unions and opposition parties criticize him for focusing his consultations only on permanent immigration – which Quebec controls – without taking temporary immigration into account in his calculations.
Mme Fréchette called on the federal government, which controls the majority of temporary immigration. She suggested that Ottawa is turning a deaf ear to her arguments regarding Quebec’s limited reception capacity.
It is important that the Canadian government revises its annual immigration objectives for the coming years, the half a million people, or even more, that it plans to welcome over the coming years, considering the number of people there already in the country, in Canada.
Christine Fréchette, Quebec Minister of Immigration
“It deserves reflection and awareness,” continued Mme Frechette.
However, she deplored that her federal counterpart at Immigration, Marc Miller, remains insensitive to the problems of lack of housing or the difficulties for Quebec in providing public services to new arrivals.
“I have already discussed it with Mr. Miller and it was not an element of his thinking, this notion of reception capacity. So for me, it’s problematic. »
Let us recall that last spring, Mme Fréchette had presented two scenarios regarding permanent immigration: maintaining the thresholds at 50,000 immigrants per year, or gradually increasing them to 60,000 by 2027.
This was a major turnaround for François Legault’s team, which had declared during the electoral campaign that raising the thresholds beyond 50,000 would be “suicidal”.
Therefore, the challenge of welcoming 50,000 or 60,000 permanent immigrants per year is well below the actual number of new arrivals who are on the territory of Quebec.
In its summary, Statistics Canada notes that Quebec experienced “record” demographic growth, between July 2022 and July of this year, with an increase of 2.3%, but nevertheless ranked penultimate. among all the provinces.
The number of temporary residents saw a major jump of 46% nationwide, reaching nearly 2.2 million in the second quarter of 2023.