From the very start of the Quebec election campaign, Parti Québécois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon made it clear that immigration would once again be one of the defining issues. By proposing to cut the number of temporary immigrants in the province by half and reduce permanent immigration to roughly 35,000 people a year, the PQ leader has reignited a debate that, predictably, quickly became polarized.
It took only a few days for the discussion to move away from the proposed levels and from Quebec’s actual capacity to welcome and integrate newcomers. Québec solidaire co-spokesperson Ruba Ghazal was quick to ask the PQ leader to define “what is a Quebecer?” Liberal leader Charles Milliard, for his part, accused PSPP of operating in a “gray zone” when discussing immigration.
Welcome to Quebec’s immigration debate. A debate in which, all too often, questions about motives take precedence over questions of policy. And this tendency is nothing new.
Back in 2016, then-Liberal premier Philippe Couillard accused François Legault, at the time leader of the second opposition group in the National Assembly, of “fanning the flames of intolerance” after Legault questioned Quebec’s capacity to increase annual immigration from 50,000 to 60,000 newcomers.
Ten years later, the language has changed, but the reflex remains essentially the same. As soon as someone questions an immigration target or a politician raises the issue of integration capacity, they quickly become suspect.
Yet, if we do not want to surrender the immigration debate to the extremes, we need to be able to ask a simple question openly: how many people are we actually capable of welcoming and integrating successfully?
It’s a tough question. Integration capacity is not a magic number set in stone. It evolves over time and differs from one region to another. It depends on available housing, the capacity of our schools, access to French-language instruction and, more broadly, our ability to integrate newcomers into Quebec society. Social cohesion also has to be part of the discussion.
A region facing a labour shortage and a declining population does not face the same reality as a major urban centre where housing, schools, and public services are already under significant strain. We should be mature enough as a society to recognize those differences and discuss them openly.
The economic realities specific to certain regions and sectors also matter. The labour challenges faced by certain industries are very real and deserve to be taken seriously. But they should not, on their own, dictate immigration policy.
Which is what makes the regionalization of immigration particularly interesting. We still talk too often about immigration through broad national or provincial targets, as if the situation were the same everywhere. It is not. Montreal does not face the same demographic reality as Sherbrooke, Beauceville or Val-d’Or.
English Canada should be more willing to have this debate as well. Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary are dealing with many of the same pressures on housing, infrastructure and public services. Quebec may talk about integration capacity more openly, but the question should interest the rest of Canada too.
And in Quebec, there is also the question of French. We are a French-speaking society of nine million people in a largely English-speaking North America. There is nothing radical about recognizing that our capacity to welcome newcomers is closely tied to our ability to give them the tools to participate fully in a French-speaking society.
But integration is a concept that goes beyond language. It is also about sharing some basic values, understanding the institutions of the society you are joining and, over time, developing a sense that you belong to something larger than yourself. A society needs that sense of common civic and civilizational belonging if it is to remain cohesive over time.
All of these elements show why the debate over integration capacity deserves better than the familiar accusations and assumptions we have now become accustomed.
Raising questions about our capacity to welcome newcomers does not mean shifting the burden of our collective choices onto immigrants who choose Quebec. On the contrary, it means taking seriously the responsibility we have toward them.
When someone chooses Quebec, we should want them to be able to find their place here, learn French, build a life, and develop a genuine sense of belonging. When our capacity to integrate newcomers is overwhelmed, they pay a price as well.
That is ultimately what the immigration debate should be about: not searching for someone to blame, but making sure that those who choose Quebec have a real chance to succeed here and, over time, to feel fully at home.
Kevin Paquette is a consultant at Crestview Strategy. He was a political advisor to Quebec’s Minister of Public Security and president of the Coalition Avenir Québec’s youth wing.
