La Presse’s Suzanne Colpron has a dossier Sunday on the temporary immigration situation, starting with examining how it came about. One economist is clear about that: business lobbies wanted more manpower, and François Legault listened.
The numbers of temporary workers in Quebec rose from 301,000 to 588,000 in two years, and changes in regulations allowed businesses to increase the proportion of temporary workers they could hire. Colpron has a bullet point list of other changes that allowed asylum seekers, foreign students and temporary workers to stay here longer, work more hours, and apply for permanent resident status.
Sidebars look at the growing debate and the current situation.
Meantime, Legault thinks he can “humanely” displace half of Quebec’s asylum seekers – Colpron’s report suggests there are more than 150,000 asylum seekers here – towards other provinces. Not only that, he probably thinks it would be a popular move. History shows that forcing people out is not a good look, although Legault may be able to argue that it’s because they don’t speak French. (Although I suppose this is the divide between temporary workers and asylum seekers. He doesn’t want that second group at all.)
Latest from La Presse, Sunday evening: Legault didn’t take Canada’s charter of rights into account, when promising to force 80,000 people out of Quebec. But could he notwithstanding‑clause his way out of this?
carswell 12:35 on 2024-10-06 Permalink
Them vs. us and other demonization tactics, holding camps, forced deportations.
How Orbànesque. And Legault’s actively normalizing this. Atalante surely approves.
JaneyB 13:15 on 2024-10-06 Permalink
The immigration situation is a mess, both permanent and temporary. Virtually everyone I have spoken with, left, right, young, old, Canadian, older immigrant, and in several provinces is very unhappy about large numbers of immigrants/foreign students and/or irregular refugees. The federal Liberals are collapsing under the weight of this issue in particular as well as its related housing crisis. We’ve had 1.6 million immigrants per year recently – with no commensurate infrastructure support to deal with them and no real way to absorb them; cash jobs in the underground in the GTA are widespread as a result. Our previous broad consensus on the value of immigrant is no longer there – at this scale. Historic immigration norms for all of Canada are about 200k per year. Legault’s move will indeed be very popular here. When the PQ wins in the next election, it will do the same thing with full public support.
Kate 18:13 on 2024-10-06 Permalink
What strikes me most is that, by looking grumpy about it, Legault has somehow made the situation sound totally like la faute du fédéral whereas, if the economist cited by Colpron is correct, it was actually his government that opened the taps to the influx of temporary workers. What did Legault think was going to happen? Was Justin Trudeau supposed to step in and block Legault’s own scheme?
Ian 19:33 on 2024-10-07 Permalink
Why it’s almost as if he’s being duplicitous to cover for his total lack of comprehension of statecraft. Thank heavens the CAQ aren’t separatists, they’re even dopier than the PQ.