The Accompagnement Québec service, aimed at guiding newcomers in their installation and integration processes, misses its target. While some immigrant support organizations question its usefulness, the most recent data show that the service is very little used, if not completely unknown.
In 2023-2024, just over 12,000 people benefited from an assessment of their needs by Accompagnement Québec, reveal the most recent data from the Ministry of Immigration, Francisation and Integration (MIFI). The previous year, in 2022-2023, nearly 10,000 immigrants had a meeting with a service agent.
For Stephan Reichhold, director of the Table de concertation des organizations serving refugees and immigrants, reaching a few thousand people out of a total of hundreds of thousands of immigrants who arrive here, “is nothing! »
According to him, the hundred immigrant aid organizations that he represents and which are also funded by the MIFI to support and accompany immigrants have welcomed many more: almost 100,000 people over the last 12 months. “Everyone agrees that[Accompagnement Québec], it doesn’t work,” he said. “It’s a government trademark, but [en fait], this cannot continue. »
Completed in May 2023, a survey carried out by the MIFI obtained by The duty reveals that 70% of respondents said they did not know Accompagnement Québec. In addition, around half of the people interviewed indicated that they did not know the steps to follow to immigrate, to look for a job or to have their skills recognized.
Whether here or in their country of origin, an immigrant who receives a certificate to reside in Quebec permanently or temporarily should be invited by email to register with Accompagnement Québec through the Arrima platform. He will then be contacted by an integration support agent who will put together an individualized plan based on his needs (francization, employment, etc.) and will direct him to an organization on the ground.
A duplicate service
In the summer of 2019, the then Minister of Immigration, Simon Jolin-Barrette, enhanced the Accompagnement Québec service by opening more regional offices and increasing the workforce in the regions. He was thus reacting to criticism in the Auditor General’s report, which criticized the government for not knowing the real needs of immigrants and failing to direct them to the right services.
Since the reform, Accompagnement Québec’s more specific mission is to encourage immigrants to settle in the region and to help employers recruit them. But, on the ground, certain organizations are questioning the role that the service plays.
At the Groupe Inclusia organization in Saguenay, very few immigrants — around 5% — were sent by Accompagnement Québec. “The vast majority of people who come to us are through word of mouth or through employers who recruit internationally,” explains the coordinator, Sylvie Pedneault. Even if several meetings take place per year with Quebec civil servants and regional organizations in order to align their work, she notes that there are still “duplications”. “We, the host organizations, have always made integration plans to direct the immigrant to the appropriate resources. But this is the role that Accompagnement Québec has taken,” she said. “Concretely, what more this service does, I don’t know. »
The fact that immigrants must themselves register for Accompagnement Québec services in Arrima adds a certain “heaviness” for them, believes Mme Pedneault. “It’s like an added step in their journey, when they already have a lot of other things to do. This is not optimal. » This heaviness also extends to the organizations to which immigrants are redirected anyway and which are responsible for accompanying them through the twists and turns of Arrima.
For greater efficiency, Sylvie Pedneault suggests that Accompagnement Québec takes care of people who do not fall within its organization’s funding criteria, such as asylum seekers, for example.
Leaders of a regional francization center were also very critical of this government service. “What is their mission? We don’t know,” said Duty one of these leaders, who remains anonymous so as not to harm his relations with the MIFI. He says he has contacted agents numerous times to better understand their services and to know how to advise immigrants who have needs beyond francization… in vain. “Looks like no one works there. We don’t know what they are doing. It’s very vague,” says this person. “The organizations helping immigrants, we see their actions on the ground, but Accompagnement Québec… we don’t really know. »
Few welcomes at the airport
At the Montreal airport, the reception service for immigrants, notably supposed to direct them to Accompagnement Québec, is a failure. According to the 2022-2023 annual management report, barely 9% of adult immigrants who passed through this reception desk actually registered with Accompagnement Québec, which completely misses the target of 75% that had been set.
According to the MIFI, the failure to achieve the objective is explained by the fact that immigrants have, since spring 2021, been invited to register online directly on the Arrima platform. Since 2020, the number of people welcomed by the service at the airport has been in free fall, according to data obtained by the Access to Information Act. Temporary foreign workers, of whom there are barely a few dozen who have passed through this counter, are not “systematically” received by the airport reception service. “A broader reflection is underway”, we read in the report.