According to data made public Wednesday morning by Statistics Canada, La Belle Province has seen a jump in the number of non-permanent residents present on its territory over the last three months.
Thus, Quebec had 597,140 temporary immigrants on April 1, while this figure was 560,174 on January 1.
A third of them – 189,962 – had asylum seeker status on April 1. The others were almost all holders of work permits, study permits or both.
The publication of such figures risks bringing grist to the mill of François Legault, who has been repeating for months that the massive influx of temporary immigrants into Quebec territory is undermining his government’s capacity to provide services to the population, accentuates the housing crisis and threatens the future of French.
Federal Minister of Immigration, Citizenship and Refugees, Marc Miller (new window)asserts for his part that Mr. Legault exaggerated
and accuses the latter of break sugar
on the backs of the new arrivals.
The two levels of government do not agree on what happens next. François Legault would like to repatriate all federal powers regarding immigration to Quebec, but his federal counterpart remains firmly opposed to this idea (new window).
As of April 1, Quebec housed on its territory 52.3% of all asylum seekers in Canada, compared to 40% for Ontario, a province twice as populous.
Data recently made public by Mr. Miller’s ministry, however, suggests that the situation could be rebalanced. These figures show that Ontario received more asylum applications than Quebec during the first four months of 2024 (new window).
More details will follow.
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