Push on to recruit immigrants to be CHSLD workers
Desperate to increase staffing, the province is launching a pilot project to convince immigrants to become orderlies in the labour-strapped CHSLD network.
Quebec Minister of Immigration Simon Jolin-barrette made the announcement Thursday, one day after Premier François Legault announced plans to launch a massive recruitment program to add 10,000 workers to the network.
Jolin-barrette said existing programs have failed to respond to the needs of the health-care system. Since 2013, only 115 new arrivals have become orderlies. The goal of the new program is to produce 550 more CHSLD workers a year.
“Our selection programs are not delivering the goods,” Jolin-barrette said at a news conference. “I have high hopes this new program will be more attractive.
“The needs are immediate.” Under the pilot program, candidates who have worked in the health network in their country of origin for two years and agree to work two years in the system here will have a better chance of obtaining citizenship.
The exact details of the program will be announced at a later date, with plans to advertise it in other countries.
The project is part of a reform package to the hugely popular Quebec Experience Program (PEQ) presented by Jolin-barrette Thursday.
That program provided foreign students and temporary workers with a fast track to permanent residency. Jolin-barrette’s first attempt to reform the program failed when candidates complained Quebec was radically cutting eligible disciplines.
In some cases, PEQ candidates were already living and working in Quebec and complained the government was changing the rules in the middle of the game.
Jolin-barrette went back to square one. His latest reform proposal again tightens up the rules. Candidates for PEQ will need to have worked a year in Quebec before applying, and their spouses will need to have a certain mastery of French.
Jolin-barrette did not hide the fact he thinks the PEQ program hampers Quebec’s ability to align immigration with the province’s labour market, which he proposes to do using Quebec’s existing Arrima program.
The opposition, however, saw irony in Jolin-barrette wanting to increase immigration now that Quebec is hard-pressed for labour in the health system, after cutting immigration in the first year the CAQ government was in power.
“Let’s hope that this crisis opens the eyes of the CAQ on the real value of immigrants,” said Québec solidaire co-spokesperson Gabriel Nadeau-dubois.
“Let’s hope in all this tragedy, this will at least convince the CAQ that immigrants are not something we should be afraid of, but that they are here to help our society.”
Liberal immigration critic Monsef Derraji said the new reforms are worse than the previous attempt, and will actually increase wait times.
“If the objective is to make the labour shortage worse, I think it’s mission accomplished for the minister,” said Derraji.