Mix a high volume of asylum seekers landing in Quebec with pressurized accommodation capacity. Add to that a good dose of administrative rigidity. You will then obtain inhumane situations unworthy of what Quebec has to offer. It was such a scenario of indignity that awaited Henry Aguamba, his wife, Tessy, and their three children when they arrived in Montreal at the end of April. Our journalist Lisa-Marie Gervais recounted the first night of this Nigerian family who came to seek refuge in Quebec. Because she did not have the sacrosanct acknowledgment of receipt required by the organization responsible for her reception, she had to sleep in front of a subway entrance.
The family experienced adversity in their home country. Last summer, while on their way to the embassy in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, in search of the visas needed to leave the country, the family was brutally attacked. The eldest of the three children, aged 10, was shot in the spine. Having become paraplegic, she now uses a wheelchair.
We assume that it is a welcoming land that we seek when we flee our country. Upon arrival at the Montreal airport, the Aguamba family, fearing being sent back to where they came from, made the mistake of not immediately asking a border agent for asylum. Without knowing it, she had just stepped foot into an aberrant administrative quagmire.
Without relatives or friends in Quebec, without money, the members of the small family were then refused when they presented themselves in due form at the door of the Regional Reception and Integration Program for applicants. asylum (PRAIDA) because they did not have official proof confirming their status. They were directed to a website, with the mission of obtaining an acknowledgment of receipt supposed to open the doors to decent accommodation. Failed in this way, the family found themselves near the entrance to the Bonaventure metro station, in the rain, for an entire night. The organization that finally took her in the next day said that this scenario was not new. Every week, asylum seekers encounter closed doors.
We will recall that last February, four ministers from François Legault’s government made a media appearance warning that the incessant flow of arrivals in Quebec would end up creating a “humanitarian crisis”. There was a bit of theater in their flight intended to convince Ottawa to slow down the flow of entries, but we must admit that what the Aguamba family experienced is akin to the start of what we can call a humanitarian crisis .
Combined with a glaring lack of housing leaving more and more Quebecers on the street, the massive arrival of asylum seekers in Quebec is creating unsustainable pressure on organizations supporting new arrivals, especially in accommodation. PRAIDA, headed by the Ministry of Health, indeed has the mission “to welcome and support asylum seekers in their establishment in Quebec, while respecting their dignity and their rights”, but the report annual report for 2022-2023 reports an unprecedented flow of arrivals in Quebec which is undermining the accommodation capacity of 1,200 places.
Quebec has been rightly outraged by Ottawa’s apathy on this issue for a while now. The two governments are arguing over figures, to the point where this quarrel has paralyzed actions on the ground. The Aguamba family experienced the repercussions the hard way.
Quebec says that in 2023, it received more than 65,000 of the approximately 144,000 asylum seekers who entered Canada, or 45% of the total. Open data from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) consulted by The duty show another reality, with approximately 35% of entries associated with Quebec. The gap is essentially explained by the fact that a proportion of asylum seekers who have indeed entered Quebec then move on to other provinces, including Ontario.
The provincial immigration ministers and their federal counterpart, Marc Miller, agreed last week to create a federal-provincial committee whose mission will be to carefully study this distribution of asylum seekers between the provinces, in order to better then compete for the share of the financial pie. Is this a political diversion and a way of pushing forward a problem which, while it is being examined in committee, can only get worse?
This committee was created at the instigation of the Minister of Immigration of Quebec, Christine Fréchette, who says she is inspired by similar initiatives attempted in the European Union, in Germany and in Switzerland for example. Parliament around a better distribution between the provinces, to relieve Quebec and Ontario of undue pressure, is an idea that we cannot oppose. Let us hope that this new space for dialogue will serve to develop constructive solutions rather than continuing a sterile war of numbers.