If we had to choose among the blunders of the Trudeau government, there would be enough material to have to series it. In the “disconnect” category, we would put vacations with the Aga Khan and with Jamaica’s billionaire friend as well as the crazy fashion show during a visit to India. In the “incapacity” category, there would be the delays in issuing passports and the ArriveCAN saga. Under “cronyism”, we would find the lucrative contracts with friends of McKinsey and company, the SNC-Lavalin affair and that of Mouvement UNIS. In the “recklessness” column, we should recall Justin Trudeau’s 2015 promise to create small deficits that would resolve themselves and his slowness in reacting to foreign influence.
But none of these errors is as significant and profoundly harmful to the quality of life of citizens, Canadians and Quebecers, as the decision taken in 2015 to open the floodgates of immigration, permanent and temporary, and to plunge the entire country in what the chief economist of the National Bank, Stéfane Marion, calls “the demographic trap”. It takes a lot of political correctness to refuse to recognize the extent of the damage caused by the Trudeau team to the economic and social fabric of Quebec and Canada.
In housing, Marion wrote in April that “there is no precedent for a housing supply deficit of such magnitude”, referring to that now recorded. “Returning to normal could take years; In the meantime, Canadian households should not expect significant relief from housing cost inflation. » This therefore means that federal migration policy will have long-term consequences, not only on the housing crisis, but on inflation itself. Other economists concluded that it had a downward effect on productivity, now at half mast in Canada.
Marion calculated in May that, far from fading, “the demographic shock is getting worse in Canada”, in a crazy increase of 47% between the start of 2023 and the start of 2024. His opinion: “Ottawa having announced its intention to limit immigration from 2025, it seems that many people have decided to come to Canada earlier. Housing affordability issues could worsen in the coming quarters as we head into another record year of population growth. »
Monday, during his press conference, François Legault dared to make a numerical demonstration. In ten years, the number of temporary workers in Quebec has quintupled, going from 105,000 per year to 560,000. If we only calculate the increase over the last two years, i.e. 270,000 new residents, he estimates that there would have required 120,000 additional housing units to accommodate them. However, the entire housing sector only delivered 90,000 new homes over this same period, causing a shortage of 30,000 homes. He concludes that, if the number of temporary workers had remained stable, the shortage would not exist.
Justin Trudeau’s response was to assert that “it’s not always the best thing to do, to target and say that everything is the fault of immigrants.”
So, the Premier of Quebec is presenting a demonstration. The Prime Minister of Canada, responsible for the damage caused, responds, not only with an opinion, but also with a distortion of the statement (also taken up in Quebec by Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois). Legault says: it’s the fault of federal immigration policy. Trudeau responds: stop saying it’s the immigrants’ fault.
There is bad faith in the system. Trudeau also echoed the comments made last Thursday by his friend Marc Miller, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, on the real reason for Legault’s bad-tempered barbs: the rise of separatists. “I understand,” he said, “that there is a somewhat particular context in the National Assembly these days with the rise of the PQ [Parti québécois]. I understand that Mr. Legault is responding to political demands. »
You see ? It does not matter. This is political rhetoric. Marc Miller will explain it to you. Here: “For a year, the theme of immigration has been weighing down […]it’s a rhetoric, I believe, that is unfortunately quite toxic in Quebec – because Quebec, all in all, has done a very good job of integration over the years – […] But I know that there is also an element of political theater which is, in my opinion, quite unfortunate. »
Yes, but apart from housing, Quebec says that the pressure on its schools is considerable, to the point that, according to the Prime Minister, among the 560,000 temporary workers, there are 52,000 school-aged children. To supervise them, 3,700 teachers are needed. However, in the entire network, there is a shortage of 6,300. The absence of these children would therefore not solve the entire shortage problem, but would still solve half of it.
What does Minister Miller think? “It was not immigrants who caused the teacher shortage that [se voit] in Quebec for years. Thousands of teachers have nothing to do with immigration. […] At the same time, Quebec is not wrong either. But not necessarily right. It is this exaggeration, which sometimes has a certain basis in reality, that I criticize [au gouvernement québécois], because if you don’t identify the problem, it’s difficult to find the solution. »
I still get the impression that there is one who is seriously trying to identify the problem, and another who is pretending not to understand. Can you tell me which one?