Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon is calling for a four-year moratorium on economic immigrants as the party gets set to unveil its own plan on Monday.
QUEBEC CITY — Ottawa’s plan to lower the number of new permanent residents is “not enough,” Parti Québécois MNA Pascal Bérubé told reporters Thursday at the National Assembly. The remarks came as the party is set to unveil its immigration plan on Monday.
Premier François Legault also criticized the federal plan.
“It’s not a big drop,” he said Thursday.
The premier has been calling on Ottawa for months to reduce temporary immigration by 50 per cent.
PQ Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon has already signalled his party’s plan will call for a “drastic” and “substantial” reductions in all categories of new arrivals.
The document, titled “A Quebec free in its choices, for a viable immigration model,” is being framed as a “reply to the Century Initiative,” which aims to grow Canada’s population to 100 million by 2100.
The PQ has remained critical of Legault, saying his immigration goals are too timid and that he has been unable to extract significant gains from the federal government.
This summer, Quebec announced a six-month suspension of the temporary foreign workers program for low-salaried jobs in Montreal. In recent weeks, Quebec Immigration Minister Jean-François Roberge tabled a bill that would reduce the number of international students, but didn’t define a target.
In an interview with La Presse, Plamondon said he aims to reduce the number of temporary immigrants in the province from the current 600,000 to between 250,000 and 300,000 within a first mandate.
He also called for a four-year moratorium on economic immigrants.
Québec solidaire pulled no punches in its rebuttal to the PQ.
“I just about fell out of my chair,” MNA Guillaume Cliche-Rivard told reporters. “The plan doesn’t work,” he said, adding that the PQ has yet to explain how it would halve the number of temporary immigrants.
“They’re talking about reducing permanent economic immigration. That’s where we select a huge share of francophone immigration… For us to reduce the contribution of French-speaking immigrants who counterbalance the other categories where we don’t do so, in family (reunification) or (asylum seekers), for example, for me, that’s beyond comprehension,” he added.