“The current immigration model is non-viable and shows a complete loss of control,” Paul St-Pierre Plamondon says.
QUEBEC — A Parti Québécois government would drastically reduce the number of full-time and temporary immigrants in Quebec.
In a policy paper to be made public Monday, the party argues the federal and Quebec governments have lost control of immigration, an “untenable situation” that is not the fault of immigrants but that is affecting demand for such services as housing.
The policy paper proposes Quebec reduce the number of permanent immigrants from the current level of about 50,000 a year to 35,000.
The number of temporary foreign workers in Quebec would drop to 40,000 from 270,000, the document says. Sections of the study were obtained by The Gazette over the weekend.
The policy paper argues 35,000 is not an unrealistic number and corresponds with the numbers Quebec had in the 1990s, reflecting the same per-capita numbers as France, Italy and the United States.
The paper argues that during that period, “French did not experience any decline in Quebec, even better, it progressed in Montreal.”
The government is planning to further cut intake to 380,000 in 2026 and 365,000 in 2027.
PQ leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon issued a statement Sunday about the PQ’s vision.
“The current immigration model is non-viable and shows a complete loss of control from both the federal and Quebec governments,” St-Pierre Plamondon said. “We must go back to numbers that are respectful of Quebec’s integration capacity.
“We aim for 35,000 permanent immigrants a year because these were the levels before the Charest government, where the French language was on the rise and public services functional.”
The policy paper says that instead of boosting the number of new arrivals, Quebec should select new permanent immigrants from the pool of temporary immigrants already established and working in Quebec.
Two groups would be given priority from that pool: foreign francophone students who have been working for two years in Quebec and workers hired directly by companies in fields with serious labour shortages.
At the same time, a PQ government would slap a moratorium on the arrival of permanent immigrants in the category it controls: economic immigrants who arrive under the Programme régulier des travailleurs qualifiés (PRTQ).
In a status quo approach, she said Quebec would welcome 50,000 immigrants for 2024 and 50,000 for 2025. Most of these immigrants are in the economic category — defined as skilled workers, investors and entrepreneurs — which Quebec controls under an agreement with the federal government.
The PQ argues the Century Initiative’s philosophy that the only way to make up for labour shortages in Canada is to increase the population is flawed and would hurt Quebec’s demographic standing in Canada and the status of French.
St-Pierre Plamondon is to make public the PQ’s immigration study at a morning news conference.