(Quebec) The CAQ government says it is surprised by the nearly 50 percent increase in the number of temporary immigrants in Quebec and is demanding “awareness” from the federal government about the country’s absorption capacity.
Published yesterday at 5:31 p.m.
Patrice Bergeron The Canadian Press
Statistics Canada announced on Wednesday that there were almost 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 at the extent of the changes,” Immigration Minister Christine Fréchette admitted in a press briefing on Wednesday after the Council of Ministers meeting.
The person currently leading consultations on immigration planning for 2024 to 2027 said these figures would be a “game changer” but did not announce any changes.
Trade unions and opposition parties have criticized him for focusing his consultations only on permanent immigration – which Quebec controls – without taking temporary immigration into account in his calculations.
Ms. Fréchette appealed to the federal government, which controls most temporary immigration. She suggested that Ottawa was deaf to her arguments about Quebec’s limited absorption capacity.
It is important that the Canadian government revise its annual immigration targets for the coming years, namely the half a million people or even more that it wants to admit in the coming years, given the number of people already in the country, in Canada, condition .
Christine Fréchette, Quebec Immigration Minister
“It deserves reflection and awareness,” Ms. Fréchette continued.
However, she regretted that her federal immigration counterpart, Marc Miller, remained insensitive to the problems of housing shortages or the difficulties faced by Quebec in providing public services to newcomers.
“I’ve already discussed it with Mr. Miller and it wasn’t part of his thinking, this idea of absorption capacity. So for me it’s problematic. »
Recall that last spring Ms. Fréchette presented two scenarios for permanent immigration: maintaining the thresholds at 50,000 immigrants per year or gradually increasing them to 60,000 by 2027.
This was a major U-turn for François Legault’s team, which had declared during the election campaign that raising the thresholds beyond 50,000 would be “suicidal”.
Therefore, the challenge of absorbing 50,000 or 60,000 permanent immigrants per year is far below the actual number of newcomers staying in Quebec territory.
In its summary, Statistics Canada notes that Quebec experienced “record” demographic growth between July 2022 and July this year, with an increase of 2.3%, but still ranked second-to-last among all provinces.
The number of temporary residents increased significantly nationwide by 46%, reaching nearly 2.2 million in the second quarter of 2023.