December 20, 2022 | Submitted by Samer Elniz, Quebec communications co-ordinator, MAC

During the recent election campaign, Premier François Legault was criticized for saying “Quebecers are peaceful. They don’t like bickering, they don’t like extremists, they don’t like violence,” in response to a reporter’s question on whether he thought increased immigration targets would threaten the lifestyle of Quebecers.

Legault later expressed regret for making the association between immigration and extremism and violence. But in the same month, he said it would be “suicidal” for Quebec to accept more than 50,000 immigrants per year, and his government has since reaffirmed this limit.

More recently, Legault has maintained that the province cannot accept more than 50,000 immigrants because of Quebec’s priority to preserve the French language.

Legault’s cap doesn’t make any sense economically. Even though the number of job vacancies in Quebec is 88 per cent higher than it was before the pandemic, and nearly half of the positions remain unfilled for three months or more, Legault is restricting immigration at a time when the rest of Canada is looking at skilled immigrants to fill labour shortages. Chains like Tim Hortons only had a third of their pre-pandemic workforce in 2021, and the total number of jobs in the foodservice and accommodation sector is still 153,600 below pre-pandemic levels.

Read the full article.

– Chronical-Telegraph Quebec