Trudeau agrees to $750 million to help Quebec deal with temporary immigrants (2024)

QUEBEC — The Canadian government has offered Quebec $750-million to help it deal with the extraordinary costs of a disproportionate number of temporary workers and asylum claimants in the province.

ButQuebec Premier François Legault said he was disappointed he could not get the full amount he was seeking — $1 billion to cover the costs of the last three years of services — and a specific target to reduce the number of temporary immigrants, including halving the number of asylum seekers in the province.

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Ottawa instead goes three quarters of the way on the Quebec invoice, offering a one-time payback of $750 million, which it says is what it owes Quebec to cover bills from from 2021 on.

“We will take the $750 million,”Legault told reporters at a news conference following an hour-long one-on-one meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the Château Frontenac where the talk was all about immigration.

“We would have liked it better if it was $1 billion but we’ll take the $750 million.”

But the rest of Ottawa’s offer did not go far enough to meet Quebec’s demands, Legault added, complaining about a lack of specifics.

“Yes, I’m disappointed because I think it’s about time that we put targets, with figures,” Legault said. “The problem is urgent. We cannot say we will continue working for months and months about the principles. It’s about time we put some targets.”

Moments later, however, Trudeau — at a separate news conference — said before setting new reduction targets for temporary immigrants he wants to see Quebec’s own plan since it already controls half of total immigration in Quebec. Many of those workers are in the economic category and represent critical labour to many businesses.

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Quebec also controls the arrival of international students, something Legault said he does not want to change.

The two governments don’t even agree on the total of temporary immigrants in Quebec. While Quebec walked into the meeting with Ottawa claiming there are 560,000 temporary immigrants and asylum in Quebec, Ottawa says its total is 377,000 because some of the people who originally arrived moved on quickly to other provinces.

“We wanted to know what their (reduction plan) is,” Trudeau said. “Before setting targets we need to see Quebec’s plan. We need Quebec to adjust its own targets.

“I can’t tell you what the magic level is but I know deep conversations and working together in an cooperative manner are essential.”

It was the second Trudeau-Legault meeting in three months on the same subject. At the last one in March in Montreal, Trudeau slammed the door on Quebec’s initial request to have full powers over immigration.

Legault emerged from that meeting to say despite the no from Trudeau on full powers, the prime minister agreed to look into some of Quebec’s other beefs about the system. Trudeau arrived in Quebec City Monday with that list in his pocket.

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Detailed in a statement to the media, Ottawa pledged to process asylum claims faster. The current timeline is between 18 and 20 months. Ottawa now says it will process 20 per cent of asylum-seeker cases with nine months.

It also committed itself to reduce, by October, the current 100 days for the government to deliver a work permit to an asylum seeker to 30 days.

That should provide some relief to the province, which has have largely had to bear the costs of supporting people waiting in the process.

At his news conference, Legault presented a table detailing what the total represents in term of services provided by Quebec. Meeting the demand for health care has required 11,000 more nurses while 3,700 more teachers were needed to deal with 52,000 more school-age children, he said.

He said “100 per cent” of Quebec’s housing crisis is attributable to the increase in the number of temporary immigrants.

“When we can no longer house families, we can no longer teach children, or provide health services or slow the decline of French, we are in an urgent situation,” he said.

Nevertheless, Ottawa said it is taking other steps and will “enhance” the integrity of Canada’s visa system to reduce the number of arrivals.

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There were no specifics mentioned, but the government said steps have already been taken when it comes to Mexico with airport claims by Mexican nationals dropping from an average of 251 a week (between January 2022 and February 2024) to four claims a week.

Ottawa has agreed to one other Legault request: imposing a knowledge of French for foreign workers applying under the International Mobility Program. Workers renewing permits after three years in the program “will have to prove their French-language skills.”

“We obtained certain advances but there is still a lot of work to do,” Legault told reporters. “What the government is offering is a series of measures. But it gives us no numbers, no targets for the moment. They say they will work on this and report back in September.”

Legault also asked Trudeau, again, for a better distribution between the provinces of asylum seekers, to which Ottawa said vaguely that it is committed “to work with other provinces in supporting the voluntary movement of claimants to other jurisdictions.”

Trudeau and Legault did agree on one basic principle: reducing the total number of temporary immigrants entering Canada.

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“The increase was too high in several categories and that puts pressure on our whole country,” Trudeau said.

The meeting caps weeks where Legault, almost daily, raised the pressure on Ottawa to act.

While Legault has stopped threatening to hold a provincial referendum on the issue of more powers in immigration, he continues to cite poll results suggesting that giving Quebec more power in immigration is supported by 65 per cent of Quebecers.

On Friday, he did take another step to keep Ottawa on its toes. On the last day of the sitting of the legislature, he announced the creation of a new six-person committee to examine the constitution and the federal system to find new areas where Quebec can get more autonomy.

Asked about the committee by The Gazette, Trudeau said he understands Legault is playing to his voters given the soaring increase in the polls of Parti Québécois.

“I think it’s one of the richnesses of the federation and a constitution that people can have really robust conversations about how we can improve our democracy, how we improve our country and have real conversations on how to better meet the needs of today,” Trudeau said.

“So there is nothing inherently threatening about a province deciding to look at ways to improving our democracy.”

pauthier@postmedia.com

twitter.com/philipauthier

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