“We can’t afford to have a Roxham 2.0,” said Premier François Legault on Tuesday
“We can’t afford to have a Roxham 2.0,” said Premier François Legault on Tuesday announcing that the Sûreté du Québec will begin to patrol the border with the United States.
“Indeed, there is a real risk that ‘illegal’ Americans will rush to the Canadian and Quebec border in the coming weeks,” he said in an afternoon scrum at the National Assembly.
During the presidential campaign that led to his victory, Donald Trump made numerous references to his intention to carry out mass deportations of illegal immigrants.
As such, the SQ will conduct “visual investigations” at the borders and is in close contact with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), as well as with authorities in the border states of New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont and New York, Legault said.
Quebec’s Minister of Public Security, François Bonnardel, will provide weekly updates on the situation, he added. He will also establish contacts with municipalities near the border.
“There are citizens who are worried that the same situation (as on Roxham Road) will happen again,” said Legault.
“It’s very important that Quebec, and then Canada, doesn’t become a sieve over the next few weeks, the next few months, for illegal immigrants who might come to Canada.”
That morning, in a short speech just before the first meeting of the Quebec-U.S. ministerial working group, he said that Quebec couldn’t afford another crisis like Roxham Road.
Legault discussed immigration policy scenarios, such as changes to the Safe Third Country Agreement.
His committee is also examining responses to potential tariffs that could be imposed on products from Quebec and Canada.
Among other things, Legault assured us that he would defend the supply management system, which protects dairy producers and is regularly attacked and called into question, when Canada undertakes free trade negotiations with its partners.
“It would be irresponsible to think that the United States won’t put supply management on the table,” he said.
But he also referred to the cultural exception, i.e. the exemption of cultural products from free trade agreements, a battle Quebec has been waging for decades.
Legault recalled that Robert Lighthizer, who was the trade representative in the first Trump administration, “doesn’t like it very much.”
The premier insisted, however, that “it’s important, for our language, for our identity, that cultural products be exempted.”
He therefore wants Quebec to be a stakeholder when Canada negotiates with the United States.
The Legault government had already indicated its intention to appoint a “special high-level emissary” to represent Quebec at the renegotiation of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement in 2026.