Quebec slashes family reunification applications, devastating those affected

The CAQ government’s recent decision to impose a threshold on the number of family reunification applications it can process might already feel like old news for many Quebecers, but for those directly impacted by the decision, it spells disaster.

In June, Quebec Immigration Minister Christine Frechette announced that, over the next two years (until June 2026), the government will process a maximum of 13,000 applications on a first come, first served basis. Those numbers represent a decrease of 50% compared with the previous period. “All applications received after the maximum number of applications has been reached will be returned,” announces the Ministry of Immigration, Francisation and Integration (MIFI)’s website.

The Legault government’s decision to halve the province’s capacity for family reunification dashes the hopes of approximately 40,000 applicants who’ve been waiting an average of 34 months to bring over a spouse or a child from abroad. In sharp contrast, the wait times in the rest of Canada are closer to 10 months. The CAQ says it wants to ensure the number of approved files doesn’t exceed the province’s immigration cap. 

Earlier this year, federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller promised the feds would speed up the process to clear the backlog by treating everyone who’s received the CSQ (Quebec selection certificate) as being accepted and processing their application. Quebec responded by limiting the number of CSQs. Québec réunifié, a non-partisan organization dedicated to supporting families caught in this draining quagmire, has denounced the CAQ government’s move and worries that MIFI’s refusal to process files and grant CSQs will result in Ottawa closing the files altogether. 

‘Held hostage by the government’

I first spoke to 38-year-old Quebecer Evgeny Golubev back in February of 2024 as he relayed how he fell in love with his now-wife Anastasiia, a Russian national, while they were both on vacation. Golubev, who works as an engineer with Hydro-Québec, shared how, after waiting for two years to be reunited with his wife (who had moved to Mexico to work and be closer to him while waiting), he was diagnosed with severe depression and insomnia. 

“It’s the uncertainty that kills you,” he told me. “It makes you depressed and anxious. You feel hopeless.” At the time, Golubev told me that he was debating moving to Ontario to move things along. 

Five months later, he’s changed his mind about Ontario. Instead, he took a leave of absence from his job, grabbed his bags and his dog, and drove 5,000 kilometres to reunite with his wife in Mexico. 

“I’m trying to be patient and hoping this will be settled soon,” Golubev says. “My wife obtained the selection certificate 18 months ago, but we’re still waiting.” 

He says it’s obvious the Quebec government doesn’t want to accelerate family reunification. “When the federal government announced a willingness to speed up the process, Quebec countered by deciding not to issue CSQs so it’s the same impasse. The hope that was given to us by the federal government at the beginning of the year when they said they would eliminate the backlog, that hope was taken away from us with [Minister] Frechette’s announcement. We feel hopeless.”

Golubev doesn’t believe things will improve. He worries about the couples who’ve just filed an application and the long road ahead of them.

“They’re holding people hostage as part of this political tug of war,” he says. “In a week, it’s going to be exactly two years since I applied for family sponsorship and we’re still nowhere near the completion of this process.” 

The engineer, currently in Mexico on a tourist visa, knows his time there is limited, but he’s happy just to be able to be with his wife. “I’m just taking it day by day and trying to enjoy what we have at the moment,” he says. 

But, while he’s trying to practise patience, he readily admits to feeling demoralized.

“I’m in Mexico instead of being in Montreal with my wife and starting our life together,” he says. “And I know many people who’ve just started the process and are so discouraged, they’re planning on leaving, too.”

‘Quebec lost in the process’

When 31-year-old Quebecer Léa Beauregard moved to Turkey in 2018 to teach French as a second language, little did she know her entire life was about to change. She met Ilkay Cem Karakurt, a Turkish banker; they fell in love and later married. Eager to raise their future kids in a French environment, and despite both of them having great careers in Istanbul, Beauregard convinced her husband to move to Quebec. 

When I interviewed her back in February, she told me about her anger, frustration and even shame at persuading her husband to start a process that’s proven so Kafkaesque and unwelcoming to the person she loves. 

When I reached out to the couple, Beauregard was quick to give me an update. “Two years have passed,” she tells me, “and we can’t even see the shadow of a permanent residency visa. We’re completely disillusioned.” As a result, the couple has now decided to stay in Turkey permanently. 

“We wanted to move to Quebec,” Beauregard says, “but they made the process so difficult, we decided instead to be happy somewhere else.”

When I first spoke to the young teacher, she told me of her frustration of resigning from a position she loved because she was initially told they would be moving back to Canada within months. But much has changed since then. 

“I’ve just landed my dream job and signed with a new school,” she says. “I start in September, which makes me extremely excited.” Her husband Ilkay has also received a couple of promotions at work.

“Because of all this, it’s very hard for us to imagine moving back to Montreal now,” she says. “And because I love my husband, it would make me very sad if we moved to Quebec and he was treated like an immigrant who’s not welcome. I can see the hostility around immigration right now, and despite grieving the fact that my children won’t be born and raised in Quebec, and it will require extra effort for them to speak French, the overall situation made us lose enough time and money and left us with such a bitter taste in our mouths that we’re now in Turkey to stay and live our lives and not worry about this anymore.”

Beauregard understands how lucky she was in not having been separated from her husband throughout this entire frustrating process. “Some people must be pulling their hair out,” she says. “It’s madness to be separated from the person you love, to be kept apart for so long. We’re lucky we were together while we waited.”

The couple no longer sees a future in Quebec now. “It’s not because we didn’t want it,” she says. “We really did. But we want to stop wasting time, money and hope on this adventure that turned out quite badly. These unreasonable delays are wasting young people’s lives. We want children, a house. We would probably already have all that if we hadn’t entered into this process. It’s a regret of ours that we wasted precious years. So, we’re staying in Turkey and it’s a shame for Quebec because we’re young, educated, trilingual professionals who are hard workers and who want children. The province is the biggest loser in this situation.”

‘Feeling betrayed and unwelcome’

When I interviewed Quebecer Jean-Sébastien Gervais this past February, he had just found a job that allowed him to work remotely, which meant he could move to the Philippines. Gervais no longer wanted to be separated from his Filipino husband, Paolo, a pharmacist. The government announcing that it’s halving its capacity for family reunification has not helped reduce their anxiety. “We feel betrayed and unwelcome by our own government,” he says. 

The couple are considering moving to Ontario or New Brunswick after Paolo gets his permanent residency. “It’s easy for me to find work as a software engineer,” Gervais says, “but that also means I won’t be close to friends and family.” 

While Gervais says he’s grateful that his father is still healthy for his age, it worries him that he’s being forced to start a new life in another province with limited ability to help, should anything happen.

And while the frustration may soon be over for him, Gervais has a lot of sympathy for friends going through the process now. Patience is waning thin for many of them. “Some have already moved, and some are planning to,” he says. “A friend who’s a gastroenterologist left the province to be with his wife and is unsure if he’ll ever come back to Quebec.”

Gervais also cites the case of another friend with a master’s in software engineering who recently announced she found a job in NYC and will be moving to finally live with her husband. “All this stress, compounded with language politics and other harmful policies is driving smart and capable people out of the province.”

‘Bad-faith negotiations and surprise announcements’

Réunifié campaign coordinator Marie-Gervaise Pilon, a 47-year-old English CEGEP teacher, has spent most of the summer in the U.K. with her husband Will Blewitt, who’s patiently waiting for their application to be processed. 

Pilon was part of the team that met with Immigration Minister Frechette earlier this year and had hoped a solution could be found, only to be shocked by the government’s surprise announcement that it’s now cutting applications. 

“When the news came out, as someone actively working to have a relationship with the MIFI, I was very taken aback,” she says. “Never in my wildest dreams did I think we would get our government telling us that they’re halving the cap and if we meet the cap we’re stopping applications, and you’ll have to wait a year. I was shocked.”

The teacher says they wanted to work with the provincial ministry and find creative solutions that would meet the needs of families while not putting the government in a position where they would have to break what they felt was probably an electoral promise. 

“We were trying to compromise,” she says. “But we didn’t even get an advance notice of the announcement before it was made. It felt very much like a slap in the face.”

Pilon says she initially felt that everyone was there in good faith. “Minister Frechette sat across from me and told me she understood that we are suffering and that she wanted to find solutions,” she says. But after what happened, she’s no longer certain of that anymore. “From a purely humanitarian perspective, how do you justify any of this?” The group is now back where they started, emailing MPs and MNAs every week.

The teacher says the recent announcement means that anyone who applies in the second half of 2025 is definitely going to have to wait until that cap is lifted to get their CSQ. “Who knows what that will do to their process?” 

Pilon admits the CAQ’s anti-immigrant policies have made her start thinking of moving to the U.K. or Ontario. “I love my husband,” she says. “He’s a wonderful human and I want him to be treated well, and I worry that if he doesn’t sound like he belongs, he may have unpleasant experiences.” 

She says she feels like Quebec is becoming really unwelcoming to immigrants these days. “My husband speaks French, but with an accent,” she points out. “I’m married to an actual anglophone and Quebec right now just doesn’t feel welcoming to English speakers.” 

While the strain of family reunification has her pondering other options, her family members in Quebec also affect the choices she makes. “I have an elderly mother who needs me, and I would prefer not to be far from Montreal.”

While they’re still waiting for an end to their ordeal, Pilon and her husband are not personally affected by the new policy. Blewitt received his CSQ about a month and a half before the announcement. “I’m fighting for those who come after me,” she says. “I don’t want anybody to have to go through this craziness. We’re talking about families, people with children, some waiting in terrible situations. It’s not okay to make them wait for three to four years.”

She says she currently feels a mix of frustration, disappointment, sadness — and a great deal of solidarity. “I can’t tolerate the thought that this would be the new standard.” ■

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Read more weekly editorial columns by Toula Drimonis.