CAQ’s plan for immigration about identity
Last fall, a KFC franchise in Lévis had to close down. No, the local population didn’t get sick of the colonel’s secret recipe. The owners couldn’t find enough workers to fry the chicken.
Same story at many a fast-food restaurant in Quebec’s regions, which have had to shut down temporarily or reduce operating hours. A trucking company near Drummondville has had to park some of its trucks for lack of drivers and a nearby manufacturing firm is in a constant battle to find enough employees.
Some companies are so desperate for workers, CBC recently reported, that they’re recruiting asylum seekers flooding across the border into Quebec.
As the politicians argue over what to do with them and muse about building a fence, YvesThomas Dorval, the head of the Conseil du patronat, describes this new pool of labour as “winwin” for business.
Where, then, is the economic case for the Coalition Avenir Québec’s new immigration policy, obtained by L’actualité? The party now topping the polls as an Oct. 1 provincial election nears wants to reduce the number of immigrants to Quebec to 40,000 from 50,000 (at least temporarily, it says).
Quebec is experiencing a labour shortage — the province’s unemployment rate hit a historic low last year and the economy is firing on all cylinders. With an aging population and a low birthrate typical of Western countries, the problems are only going to get worse, experts say.
Unless we can attract more immigrants.
That’s the conclusion of a recent study from the Institut du Québec. It notes that we’re not even keeping the 50,000 arriving here now. Over the 10-year period from 2003 to 2013, Quebec’s retention rate was only 75 per cent.
A Conference Board of Canada study found that boosting immigration to one per cent of the country’s population by 2030 is key to maintaining economic growth in the decades ahead.
And yet, the CAQ wants to make it harder for immigrants to settle in Quebec. It is pledging to issue economic migrants chosen by the province a Certificat d’accompagnement transitoire. They would then have three years to obtain a job, show their proficiency in French and pass a values test in order to obtain their selection certificates from Quebec, a document they require on the road to obtaining permanent residency from Canada.
Anyone who fails the language and values tests after a few attempts or isn’t on the road to finding a job would be deemed persona non grata. Of course, Quebec doesn’t have the authority to deport anyone, the CAQ admits, but they’d nudge Ottawa to do their dirty work for them. Presumably, if the federal government declined to remove them and Quebec blocks their path to permanency, the unwelcome ones would have little choice but to move on their own. Au revoir!
Some observers see this platform policy, recently approved by CAQ MNAs, as a softening of the party’s hard line on immigration, what with its promise of free French-language courses and exceptions for refugees, the sick, single parents and new arrivals with small children. But it is sure not putting out the welcome mat.
In fact, the CAQ is making it abundantly clear: This is not a policy based on economic arguments; this is all about identity.
The CAQ, as we know, has been merrily beating the drum of identity politics during the last few years, helping feed fears of “the other” and rile up the public antipathy for immigrants with populist tropes.
We’re now seeing this rhetoric crystallize in platform policies based on asserting the Quebec identity. Want to stay here? Better conform to our values (whatever they are. We can only imagine the questions on such a test based on CAQ Leader François Legault’s past comments. He once suggested wearing a full-body bathing suit could constitute grounds for disqualification.).
Yes, Canada administers a test to immigrants obtaining their citizenship. It’s a knowledge test — about the country’s social and cultural history, democracy, geography, as well as political rights and responsibilities. You can study for it, and according to L’actualité, the pass rate on the first try is 92 per cent. The worst penalty for repeated failures is not attaining the right to vote and not obtaining full citizenship.
If the CAQ’s test was just that — a primer on Quebec history and culture — maybe it wouldn’t seem so distasteful. But framing it as a gauge of one’s values, as a test of one’s moral fibre, is repugnant. It seems designed to draw a line between us and them. It sets certain people up to fail, not on their skills or abilities, but on their opinions and beliefs. It sends the not-so-subtle message “it’s not us, it’s you.” Integration is a one-way street.
The requirement that all immigrants have a job or be in the process of finding one after three years seems reasonable enough until you consider the difficulty anyone whose last name isn’t Tremblay or Bouchard has in finding work in Quebec. A new study by a researcher at l’Université Laval echoed the findings of one conducted by the Quebec Human Rights Commission eight years ago: Resumés with identical credentials sent out by job hunters with foreign names get callbacks half as often as those with Québécois names.
Research by the Institut de recherche et d’informations socio-économiques (IRIS) unsurprisingly found that minorities are badly under-represented in Quebec’s public sector. While 13 per cent of Quebecers identify as visible minorities, according to 2016 census data, only 4.4 per cent of Hydro- Québec employees and 4.3 per cent of Montreal school board employees meet this description. Even the city of Montreal, where a third of the population comes from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, fails to reflect its diversity, an issue Mayor Valérie Plante has formed a task force to examine. Keep in mind the label ‘visible minority’ does not necessarily mean immigrant. Many of those failing to get job interviews or be hired by public organizations were born here, so what chance do newcomers have?
The CAQ policy notes that the unemployment rate for immigrants after five years is 15 per cent. But is it them? Or is it us?
Immigrants don’t need to fail the CAQ’s values test for many to feel unwelcome in Quebec. But at a time we should be rolling out the red carpet to newcomers for the sake of our continued prosperity and growth, the CAQ wants to show them the door.