In response to the Roxham Road closure, the Liberals spoke of “excellent news”, the CAQ a victory and the NDP an invisible wall of Trumpist inspiration1.
Posted at 6:00 am
Rather, I believe that in terms of immigration, Roxham Road is the tree that hides the forest, a forest that I hope will now be revealed.
On the one hand, the forest is the spectacular catalog of questions that the federal government has still not answered, and on the other hand, the chaotic control of immigration by the federal departments.
Indeed, listening to the Ottawa officials, we get the impression that good feelings serve public order and that improvisation is a management method. Federal difficulties range from issuing work permits to weak support for organizations in this area, including the inability to offer services in French, communicating with the provinces or managing international agreements. In addition, Immigration Canada has 2 million applications of all types waiting to be processed. It’s bad.
There are also the substantive questions that the federal government and everyone in Canada should answer.
Inspired by the Century Initiative, a project that aims to rapidly increase Canada’s population to 100 million, Canada will welcome 500,000 immigrants per year by 2025. This policy will fundamentally change the country in which we live. Do provinces, territories and indigenous nations sign up? What measures are there to ensure that the reception in the affected communities takes place gently on site?
Immigrants, but also climate refugees, refugees from war zones, dictatorships and theocracies will not be less numerous in the future, on the contrary. Yes, we have to do our part. But what is it? While the European Commission has managed to define criteria to determine the reception capacity of each country in Europe, what is the reception capacity of each province? How do we define it? Who defines it? The covenant alone? The provinces ? civil society ?
What do the indigenous people think of the impact of this massive immigration policy on the pressure exerted on their ancestral lands, their political clout, their ability to preserve their languages?
It is estimated that francophone immigration outside of Quebec would need to reach 12% by 2024 and 20% by 2036 for the francophone population to return to where it was 20 years ago. It is now at 4.4%. What measures will make it possible to preserve the importance of French in Canada2 but also the cultural dynamism of the francophone communities, because language is more than a means of communication, it carries a culture? The same question applies to the preservation of the place of French in Quebec and the dynamism of its own culture.
Quebec’s political clout is also at stake, are we giving Ottawa a little thought?
More importantly, are newcomers welcomed into a post-national country with no particular identity, or do they arrive in a country that recognizes the importance of developing Indigenous and Quebec national identities?
In addition to the internal organizational problems at Immigration Canada, there are other key stewardship issues: Do we have places in daycare or school? Will the regionalization of immigration succeed? And what about our capacity to accommodate new arrivals?
According to a Royal Bank report, Canada’s rental housing shortage could quadruple by 2026 (that’s 36 months from now!). The home vacancy rate in Canada was already at its lowest level in 21 years in 2022. In the same year, rental prices experienced the largest increase in history. What means will the federal government take to stop pushing migrants into hotels? What means will governments take to increase general housing supply (if I’m going to rely on recent federal and Quebec budgets, we’re off to a very bad start on this)?
The federal government seems too entangled in good feelings to answer the questions posed above. It’s easier for him to target good guys and bad guys. However, there is an urgent need to make collective decisions.
Both the reception of immigrants, which is a choice, and the reception of refugees, which is a duty, cannot be improvised. We must use the fact that the tree no longer completely covers the forest to encourage all governments to answer these crucial questions. They are important for newcomers, for receiving societies, for the future.