Immigration consultation: Liberals, PQ want plan to consider temporary immigrants

To increase or not the permanent immigration thresholds to 60,000 per year? That is not the question, according to the Liberal Party of Quebec (PLQ) and the Parti Québécois (PQ).

Upon their arrival at the general consultation on immigration planning Tuesday, MPs Monsef Derraji and Pascal Bérubé declared that temporary immigrants had to be taken into account.

They denounced the fact that the Minister of Immigration Christine Fréchette dismissed this issue.

According to Bérubé, the consultation – which will last three weeks – is a futile exercise if it does not take into account temporary immigrants, a number estimated at more than 300,000.

Last spring, Fréchette presented two scenarios: maintain the thresholds at 50,000 permanent immigrants per year, or gradually increase them to 60,000 by 2027.

This was a major turnaround for Premier François Legault’s team, which had declared during the election campaign that raising the thresholds beyond 50,000 would be “suicidal.”

If the second option is chosen, the thresholds could even exceed 60,000, because graduates from the Quebec Experience Program (PEQ) would not be counted.

There would also be no cap for this category.

On Tuesday, Bérubé reiterated that his party is in favor of reducing immigration thresholds, while Derraji indicated that an overall picture was necessary to measure Quebec’s reception capacity.

—This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews