The CAQ and PQ battle for the anti-immigration vote in Quebec

As public support for immigration dwindles in Quebec and Canada, and as both provincial and federal governments slowly start implementing immigration policy with an eye on the next elections, expect to see even more measures and rhetoric directly targeting newcomers. Opposition parties will, in turn, bang the same drum even louder so the focus remains on them. 

Record numbers of immigrants and asylum seekers, post-pandemic inflation, housing shortages amid government failures to provide adequate infrastructure and social services have created a “scarcity mindset” where immigration — even in cases when there’s no direct or provable correlation between the stated issue and high levels of newcomers — is constantly seen as a problem to be solved. In Quebec, immigration is also perceived by some political parties as an existential threat to the province’s French identity, language and culture, which only adds to sentiments of malaise. 

Business as usual for the CAQ

In response, the Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ) government recently announced that it’s suspending applications for the Quebec Experience Program, a popular path for permanent residency for foreign students who graduate in the province. It also put a stop to applications from the Regular Skilled Worker Program. The moratorium, which affects most of Quebec’s economic immigration, is effective immediately and is already causing concerns among the province’s business community. Earlier this year, the CAQ also slashed family reunification applications by half, devastating the 43,400 Quebec families currently separated by immigration quotas.

I don’t expect much from the CAQ when it comes to immigration. Cheap nationalism has been a mainstay of the party’s politics since the very beginning and it has stayed consistent over its two terms, with Legault claiming that accepting more than 50,000 immigrants per year would be “suicidal” for Quebec (even as the CAQ just announced the province will welcome up to 67,000 immigrants in 2025) and the party’s former immigration minister Jean Boulet brazenly (and falsely) claiming that “80% of immigrants don’t work, don’t speak French and don’t integrate.” 

The CAQ was, after all, elected on the promise to reduce immigration by 20%. It’s also the party that proposed in 2016 that immigrants be screened for compliance with Quebec’s secular values and French language and shipped off elsewhere if they fail after two attempts. Proposals, by the way,  the Parti Québécois (PQ) opposed at the time as “absurd” and “harmful,” but I’ll get to them in a second. 

Knowing all this, the CAQ’s latest attempts to hold on to power and distract from its many failures by, once again, blaming immigration for all that ails Quebec, should come as no surprise.

Housing shortages? Immigrants. 

Even though housing policy experts will tell you that immigrants have historically always been blamed for the housing crunch and shortages also exist in the regions where few immigrants can be found. 

A severe shortage of public-school teachers? Immigrants. 

Even though educational professionals point out that staff shortages have also been taking place in English schools, which newcomers don’t attend because of Bill 101, and teacher shortages have long plagued rural Quebec as retiring educators aren’t being replaced. 

A lack of promised francisation classes? Immigrants. 

Even though Ottawa provided Quebec with more than $775-million for the 2023–2024 fiscal year, yet the total budget of the Ministère de l’Immigration, de la Francisation et de l’Intégration (MIFI) was just over $478-million, indicating the total sums are not being used.

An explosion in demand for youth protection services and the inability of Quebec’s Youth Protection Department (DPJ) to stay on top of long-standing cases involving sexual misconduct of minors? Immigrants are apparently to blame for that, too.  

Even though Social Services Minister Lionel Carmant later admitted he doesn’t have any figures to support such a claim. 

This past October, Quebec Premier François Legault told reporters that Ottawa should forcibly relocate half of asylum seekers. Back in 2019, the CAQ government wanted to throw out 18,000 skilled-worker applications as a quick way of reducing backlogs. After a major outcry, the government backtracked, but not before talented and hard-working wannabe Quebecers got the message that their contributions and expertise weren’t as appreciated as they should be. 

PQ shows similar populist tendencies targeting immigrants

And there are no signs anything will change as the political landscape shifts in Quebec. If anything, the closer the PQ is to forming government, the more likely it is to play on fears revolving around immigration, identity and language.

I worry that as the PQ, which nearly fell off the political map in the 2022 election, starts to slowly rebound in popularity, it’s pushing aside its more progressive agenda and engaging in the same anti-immigration rhetoric that the CAQ has successfully used to its advantage. A big reason for the PQ’s revival has to do with its leader intensifying populist identity-based appeals and evoking fear for Quebecers’ survival. 

In citing too much immigration as a potential reason for why Quebecers aren’t having as many children, PQ leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon sounded eerily like far-right People’s Party leader Maxime Bernier, who recently made the same claim on social media. With Plamondon at the helm, the PQ appears to steadily be lurching to the right, claiming immigration is to blame for the housing shortage or declaring Canada’s goal is to “assimilate” Quebec’s francophones, discourse solely aimed at ramping up support for sovereignty. The PQ’s immigration plan was recently espoused by far-right conservative pundit and current immigrant himself, Mathieu Bock-Côté, as “courageous.”

The PQ has proposed to slash the number of international students allowed into Quebec by half, dropping it from the current 123,689 to 50,000 in the first year of the party’s mandate. This is despite those in academia warning such measures could seriously affect the province’s ability to attract top-notch academic and scientific talent from around the world.

A PQ government would also reduce the number of permanent immigrants from the current level of 50,000 a year to 35,000. The number of temporary immigrants would drop from 270,000 to 40,000. A PQ government would also put a moratorium on the arrival of permanent immigrants in the economic category.

Ottawa also reacts to a decreased appetite for immigration

Even the Trudeau administration has caved to decreasing support for immigration. Amid constant attacks by Conservative demagogue Pierre Poilievre, Ottawa announced dramatic cuts, reducing new permanent resident numbers by almost 100,000 in 2025 and for the next few years. That represents a 21% drop in permanent residents in 2025, from a previous target of 500,000 to 395,000. That’s on top of already announced reduced targets for both international students and temporary foreign workers. Quotas, by the way, that were often exceeded at the request of premiers themselves (that includes Premier Legault, too) to correspond to severe labour shortages at the time.

As I watch politicians locked in a cycle of ever-increasing anti-immigrant rhetoric, aided by media outlets that either misreport or constantly over-report on immigration, creating these dangerous narratives that we’re being completely overrun by outsiders causing all our problems, I worry.

Negative news doesn’t create an environment that’s conducive to reason, empathy and compassion. Asylum seekers, the most vulnerable among us, stand to lose the most. As for immigration, whether there’s social acceptability for it or not, we still need newcomers to boost our aging workforce and a birth rate that’s simply too low to replace our population. No amount of debate or resistance to newcomers will change that reality.

Despite having a critical mass of immigration scholars in Quebec and Canada, too often the public gets its information from those who often deliberately conflate systemic social inequalities with the increased presence of immigrants and who, in the quest for easy votes, often propose simplistic solutions to complex issues. 

Framing immigration solely as a problem without also reminding people of how vitally we depend on it inevitably affects our perception of it. We must continue discussing these issues responsibly and constantly call out all politicians willing to exploit fears and social insecurity for political expediency. ■

This article was originally published in the Nov. 2024 issue of Cult MTL.

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Read more weekly editorial columns by Toula Drimonis.