The Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) witnessed a consecutive major win for the second time with Francois Legault.
The poll’s closure declared CAQ as the winning party. Interestingly, the winning party accomplished major profits in this specific election. As a result, the number of seats increased from 76 to 90 in the Quebec National Assembly. The Quebec government experienced a powerful win ever since 1989’s liberal win. Quebec parties now need as few as 63 seats to win a majority.
The CAQ emerged in 2011 for the first time and portrayed itself as the best party working toward developing the provincial economy and healthcare system and preserving the dominant French-speaking culture in Quebec province.
Moreover, the only way to deal with Quebec’s labor shortage is to enhance the immigration levels because immigration is a dominant factor in meeting the workforce requirements in the province.
Similar to other cities and provinces in Canada, Quebec is also undergoing workforce and economic challenges. The province also comprises an aging population, and the birth rates are lower than usual, with a considerable significant gap in labor in the provincial workforce.
Immigration reforms
The federal and provincial governments continue with their shared immigration responsibility. However, Quebec remains the only Canadian province with complete authority to select its economic immigrants. CAQ even emphasizes French-speaking immigrants to maintain its cultural integrity and status as the only Francophone province.
Quebec annually reveals its Immigration Levels Plan with its target of welcoming new immigrants by sending them invites. According to 2022’s immigration plan, the target was fixed between 49,500 and 52,200 new immigrants across all categories.
However, the target for the maximum number of new immigrants falling under the economic category is 33,900. Under the economic category, Quebec wished to receive over 28,800 skilled workers and approximately 4,300 business immigrants as well.
These business immigrants would welcome self-employed individuals, entrepreneurs, and investors.
Modifications in the immigration targets
Since the province couldn’t match up to its specified targets for 2020, it brought forth the idea of welcoming around 18,000 more newcomers annually. This measure further indicates that the province will be welcoming over 70,000 new immigrants in the latter part of 2022. This specific modification also implies a significant change compared to the earlier 2019 CAQ immigration levels plan because that year, the targets were reduced to around 20 percent. However, However, CAQ did this to enhance Quebec’s selection process.
With CAQ reducing its immigration standards, Quebec focuses on permanent resident integration and francization. The province further focuses on largely investing in this specific area. For instance, 2022 to 2023 comprises budgets of $290 million to enhance the support system for newcomers to gain language proficiency in French, encourage immigrants to settle in areas outside Montreal, and speed up the processing system for immigration applications.
Future immigration reforms
Legault permitted just 50,000 new immigrants to Quebec annually throughout the fixed term. According to him, this is the maximum number of immigrants contributing to Quebec society because there are challenges concerning the integration of immigrants in this province. He specified the challenge of integrating those seeking to learn the French language. CAQ’s emphasis remains on preserving the French language status in Quebec, and this feature appears as its main pillar.
The CAQ is also trying to have more power over the family class immigrants as they contribute to over 11,000 immigrants the province seeks to welcome. However, the federal government is the final authority to decide on giving the amount of power over family class immigrants to Quebec. As reported, the federal government has denied this power to Quebec.
CAQ’s introduction of Bill-96, which came out earlier this year, went through massive criticism because it included a clause stating that the province only gave access to newcomers for public services, including hospitals, in English, after their arrival in the province for a period of six months only.
This bill indicated the limitation of using the English language in public services and courts within Quebec.
Currently, this bill is undergoing a legal debate.
