“We cannot afford to have a Roxham 2.0,” declared Prime Minister François Legault on Tuesday: he announced that the Sûreté du Québec (SQ) will now patrol the border with the United States.
“Indeed, there is a real risk that Americans, in illegal quotes, will rush towards the Canadian and Quebec border in the coming weeks,” he said in a press scrum in the afternoon at the National Assembly. .
During the presidential campaign which led to his victory, Donald Trump repeatedly mentioned his intention to carry out mass deportations of illegal immigrants.
The SQ will carry out “visual investigations” at the borders and is in close contact with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), but also with the authorities of the border states of New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont and New York, indicated Mr. Legault.
The Minister of Public Security, François Bonnardel, will take stock of the situation every week, he added. He will also establish contacts with municipalities near the border.
“There are citizens who are worried that the same situation (as Roxham Road) will happen again,” suggested François Legault.
“It is very important that Quebec, then Canada, does not become a sieve in the coming weeks, the coming months, in terms of illegal immigrants who could come to Canada. »
In the morning, in a short speech just before the first meeting of the Quebec-United States ministerial working group, he said that Quebec could not afford another crisis like Roxham Road.
This is the trail that thousands of people from the United States used to enter Canada irregularly, until March 2023, when it was closed.
Mr. Legault notably mentioned scenarios on immigration policies, such as changes to the agreement on safe third countries.
Its committee is also looking into the responses to possible customs duties that could be imposed on products coming from Quebec and Canada.
Mr. Legault assured, among other things, that he would defend the supply management system, which protects dairy producers and which is regularly attacked and called into question when Canada undertakes negotiations on free trade with its partners. .
“We have to prepare ourselves, it would be irresponsible to think that the United States is not going to put supply management on the table,” he commented.
But it also refers to the cultural exception, that is to say the exemption of cultural products from free trade agreements, a fight that Quebec has been waging for decades.
Mr. Legault recalled that Robert Lighthizer, who was the trade representative in the first Trump administration, “doesn’t like that very much”.
The Prime Minister, however, insisted on recalling that “it is important, for our language, for our identity, that cultural products are exempt.”
He therefore wants Quebec to be involved when Canada negotiates with the United States.
The Legault government had already indicated its intention to appoint a “high-level special envoy” to represent Quebec during the renegotiation of the Canada-United States-Mexico free trade agreement in 2026.
