Parti Québécois calling for freeze on temporary immigration

The Parti Québécois (PQ) is asking the CAQ government to freeze temporary immigration for this year.

The cap would have consequences for businesses that require more labour than last year, acknowledged PQ leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, but he says the measure is necessary because of the housing crisis.

He detailed his request Saturday morning in Drummondville at the beginning of the PQ’s national council, which is focusing specifically on housing.

Under an agreement from 1991, Quebec controls the number of future permanent residents entering the province, economic immigrants (66 per cent of immigration in 2022) – their integration and their francization – as well as foreign students and temporary workers.

The federal government deals with refugees, family reunification, citizenship issues, as well as its own temporary foreign worker program.

“I understand that in certain cases, if we say that we are freezing, there are consequences,” conceded St-Pierre Plamondon. ‘But if we have 44 per cent more people on the street who do not have a roof over their heads, then if we are no longer able to afford housing and that impoverishes the vast majority of households, we will have to do something.

“We can’t just sit idly by, and unfortunately that’s what the CAQ is doing.”

Under the PQ’s solution, employers and universities would be limited to welcoming the same number of foreign workers and students as they welcomed last year. Educational establishments would still be authorized to welcome all those who have been admitted in the current process in preparation for the fall return to school.

As of March 31, Quebec welcomed a total of 560,000 non-permanent residents, increasing quarter after quarter. Of these, there were 383,441 permit holders with their family members, as well as 176,733 asylum seekers — representing 46 per cent of the country’s total asylum seekers.

Quebec is facing a shortage of 1.2 million housing units by the end of the decade, estimates the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

“The (immigration) figures largely exceed our capacity to build housing units,” argued St-Pierre Plamondon. “If we don’t say that, we lack transparency and honesty towards the population.”

–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews