Allison Hanes: By bashing immigrants, CAQ bites the hand that feeds Quebec

After a breakfast speech Wednesday before the Montreal chamber of commerce, Coalition Avenir Québec leader and incumbent premier François Legault was forced to apologize for the “not true” comments of his immigration minister last week.

During a debate in Trois-Rivières, Jean Boulet claimed that 80 per cent of immigrants to Quebec “do not work, do not speak French or do not adhere to the values of Quebec society.”

Boulet tweeted a mea culpa for “expressing my thoughts badly” when called out for spreading misinformation so flagrantly false, even Legault couldn’t deny it — despite himself linking immigration with “extremists” and “violence” earlier in the campaign before downgrading it to a mere threat to social cohesion.

But in an indication of just how sorry he is, Legault in the next breath said bringing more than 50,000 newcomers a year to Quebec would be “suicidal.”

These are just the latest glaring examples of how the CAQ talks out of both sides of its mouth about immigration, depending on its audience. To foment nationalism and justify laws that protect French or enshrine secularism at the expense of minority rights, the rhetoric centres on fear-mongering and immigrant bashing. But Legault’s economic vision for Quebec hinges on the number and skill sets of immigrants, whether he likes it or not. Nobody knows this better than business leaders who can’t meet demand for their products and services due to a worsening labour shortage.

Legault or Boulet, who is also labour minister, surely must have read the white paper on immigration released by the Conseil du patronat. If they have, it makes their comments all the more disingenuous and hypocritical. If they haven’t, they should take a peek.

It says Quebec will have 1.4 million jobs that need to be filled by 2026 due to a rapidly aging population, but only 78 per cent can be met with the local labour pool.

“To bridge the gap, immigration is at once unavoidable and fully necessary,” the white paper states. But it laments: “Certain myths about immigration are difficult to dispel. For instance, the image of the immigrant who arrives in the country with their suitcases and their baggage of skills, who doesn’t speak French and is looking for a job … is no longer reflective of the reality.”

Clearly these myths die hardest in the highest echelons of government.

The facts on immigration fly in the face of the distortions about employment, language and integration being peddled on the campaign trail.

Despite the economic slowdown of the pandemic, in 2021 the unemployment rate among immigrants dropped to levels similar to those of Quebecers who were born here, according to the Conseil du patronat, with slightly higher rates for recent arrivals and lower levels among those who have been here more than five years.

Incomes for immigrants are also close to those of Quebec-born workers, especially for those who have been here longer. More recent arrivals do make less, but the data shows they manage to catch up after a decade and even out-earn Quebecers.

La Presse columnist Francis Vailles came to a similar conclusion after his own analysis of Statistics Canada information on economic immigrants. He found that in 2019 economic-class arrivals in the province who have been here at least 10 years not only had higher incomes than their fellow Quebecers, they out-earned their counterparts in Ontario and B.C.

A distinction can certainly be made with the plight of immigrants who are refugees, reunifying with family, or asylum seekers, which the federal government picks. Those admitted for humanitarian reasons do tend to face greater challenges adjusting and learning the language — and more support should be directed their way.

But between 2015 and 2019, 58 per cent of new arrivals in Quebec were economic-class immigrants, which are chosen by the province. By 2019, 86 per cent of them came through the Quebec Experience Program, which offers people who go to school, train or secure jobs here a path to a selection certificate and permanent residency.

The Conseil du patronat touted the program’s success, noting candidates “are chosen for their competencies — as recognized by their employers — either because they studied in a Quebec institution or were able to familiarize themselves with our culture and develop networks.”

Yet the CAQ government’s bungled efforts to reform the Quebec Experience Program in 2019 jeopardized all the applications in the pipeline. The government abandoned its plans and apologized after an outcry from newcomers already working here and their employers — but not before it revealed its hand.

As for language, census data from 2016 shows that only 22 per cent of immigrants to Quebec reported French as their mother tongue. But 83 per cent had knowledge of French upon arrival. Either Boulet is manipulating cherry-picked data, or he has his facts backwards.

Some 46 per cent of immigrants selected by Quebec also have a university degree, double the rate of the general population. So much for being a burden.

Quebec’s political parties all have proposals for resettling more immigrants outside of Greater Montreal to fill labour shortages and deal with the fallout of an aging society. New arrivals who obtained medical degrees in their home countries have been mentioned as one way to help more than a million Quebecers who don’t have a family physician.

Simply put, Quebec badly needs the very immigrants the party leading in the polls is disparaging and depicting as a problem.

The blatant politicization and polarization of this sensitive issue only undermines prosperity, plays Quebecers for fools and harms the social fabric Legault pledges to be so concerned about.

ahanes@postmedia.com

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