While we’re bickering over whether to accept more or less than 50,000 immigrants a year, a threshold the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) does not want to cross, Quebec is actually accepting nearly twice that number.
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From July 1, 2021 to June 30, 2022, a total of 90,900 people from other countries settled in Quebec.
The difference is temporary immigrants, people who came to Quebec for a variety of reasons—farm workers, international students, skilled workers, asylum seekers. For all of Canada there are more than 850,000.
So there is a significant discrepancy between the figures on immigration used in the public debate and the actual number of people settling here.
The debate revolves around the number of people gaining permanent residency each year.
It is this number that is the subject of disagreement between Quebec’s target of 50,000 and Ottawa’s target of 500,000 by 2025, 80,000 solidarity. And yet these dates, which have taken on symbolic value, do not adequately describe the reality of immigration.
“We’re not taking the right numbers,” says economist Pierre Fortin.
“The official figures used by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada and the Ministère de l’Immigration, de la Francisation et de l’Intégration du Québec are the permanent immigration figures. To these numbers must be added the annual increase in temporary immigration,” he explains.
The Institut du Québec says so too. In a report published in June, the authors note: “Although the Quebec government has lowered its permanent immigrant admission thresholds in recent years, the province has actually welcomed many more newcomers to its territory. »
Data on immigration thresholds are obviously not wrong. These are official statistics. But they do not fully take into account the magnitude of the arrival of an additional number of tens of thousands of people from outside our territory, and therefore the challenges related to integration and empowerment, or the impact on linguistic balance.
It’s as if when measuring the calories we’ve eaten in a day, we only take into account the calorie intake from solid foods, but forget to take into account the calories from liquids.
The true immigration figure, as defined by the United Nations, Statistics Canada and the Institut de la statistique du Québec, is in fact the sum of the two types of immigration, temporary and permanent.
Pierre Fortin, Emeritus Professor of Economics at UQAM
“It’s the increase in the number of people entering and inhabiting the national territory,” adds the economist.
Difficult to estimate
The image we often associate with an immigrant is that of a person who has applied from their country, received a positive response from Canadian authorities and one day arrives here. Once by boat, now by plane.
In fact, however, a very high proportion of those who are granted immigrant status have already been here, sometimes for years, on various programs and eventually received permanent residency.
So they don’t arrive in Canada or Quebec, they change status and column in the stats.
“There are still some that are picked from the outside, but I understand that maybe people have a better profile if they’re already here. I find it interesting to welcome people who are already here because they are integrated,” explains Stéphanie Valois, President of the Quebec Association of Immigration Lawyers.
The number of permanent immigrants is fairly stable, according to the latest Statistics Canada data: from 50,000 to 56,000 in the 2010s, 44,866 in 2018-2019, with the arrival of the CAQ in power and its commitment to raise the threshold to 40,000 , a decrease to 33,295 and to 33,673 in the two years marked by the pandemic, an increase to 62,798 in 2021-2022 due to the COVID-19 catch-up.
Meanwhile, another process is at play, that of the temporary immigration of immigrants into and out of Quebec. Their number is more difficult to determine because of the non-permanent nature of their presence. The official statistics, however, measure the balance of these inflows and outflows. In just a few years, the balance of temporary immigrants has exploded, from 12,671 in 2016 to 63,076 in 2019.
The fact that the number of people entering Quebec in this way is greater than the number leaving it means that the pool of non-permanent residents is increasing every year.
Former Minister for Immigration, Franciscation and Integration (MIFI) Jean Boulet said in June that there were 177,000 temporary immigrants in Quebec in 2021.
This figure breaks down as follows: 23,795 Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) work permit holders, 62,270 International Mobility Program work permit holders, and 90,800 international students.
However, this figure does not take into account people who are temporarily in Quebec and do not have a permit, “such as children of permit holders, spouses who have not applied for a permit, asylum seekers who do not have a permit, persons whose initial work permit has expired and on waiting for an extension with or without a work permit,” says MIFI spokesman Gabriel Bélanger.
The previous high was reached in 2019 before the pandemic with 167,435 people. In 2016 there were 102,125.
If the number of temporary immigrants is increasing, it’s because governments in both Quebec and Ottawa want them there.
Specifically, in its 2022 immigration plan, the MIFI aims to “support employers in all regions of Quebec in their efforts to recruit temporary foreign workers to increase numbers, reduce delays before their arrival and facilitate steps to adapt in the short term meet labor needs.
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698,222 Number of permanent and temporary immigrants admitted in the country in 2021-2022.
Source: Statistics Canada