They were once referred to as “job thieves”. Here they are officially promoted to the rank of “housing thieves”.
Posted at 7:00 p.m.
According to François Legault, “100%” of the housing problem in Quebec can be explained by the increase in temporary immigration1. A 100% irresponsible statement which avoids any real reflection on the causes of the housing crisis and the bad public policies which contributed to it.
Faced with the housing crisis, the Legault government initially adopted the strategy of denial. A crisis ? What crisis? Where ? seemed to say the Prime Minister in 2021, followed by the solidarity MP Manon Massé on this subject.
After denial came diversion. It’s true, there is a crisis, we finally recognized. A step in the right direction. Until we choose to name a culprit rather than find solutions. We have found the ideal scapegoat: the temporary immigrant, whether a student, foreign worker or asylum seeker.
Just yesterday, in the midst of a pandemic, we called him a “guardian angel” and thanked him for his essential work. Today, we demonize him and make him responsible for all our social ills.
Throughout the crises that are shaking our society, those who took care of the elderly in our hospitals and our CHSLDs have sadly gone from hero status to zero in public discourse, underline Me Laurence Trempe and Me Gabrielle Thiboutot in a letter published Wednesday in Dialogue, in which they rightly remind us that words have weight and come with collective responsibility.
It is very convenient to lay the blame on silent “culprits” from far away. Because no matter what outrageous things are said about them, they are in no position to respond. They are not citizens. They do not have the right to vote. They have a precarious status. They work in silence, very often doing essential jobs that no one else wants to do. They do not have the right to citizenship even if they contribute to society and pay taxes. They are often in survival mode.
What is also very convenient when we designate such scapegoats is that it relieves the government from taking its responsibilities: focusing on promising solutions to resolve the housing crisis and questioning its own policies.
If it is 100% the fault of temporary immigrants, including asylum seekers to whom Ottawa would have opened the door too wide, it is therefore 0% the responsibility of Quebec. Case closed ! There is no point, in such a context, in doubling down on the provision of social housing, in trying to better plan temporary immigration, in seeing whether it would not be appropriate to ban Airbnb-type rentals which remove thousands of housing units in the rental stock while the housing crisis subsides, to ensure that housing is first and foremost conceived by the State as a right and not as a simple commodity.
It would obviously be an illusion to claim that there is no link to be made between immigration and the housing crisis. Temporary immigrants, like everyone else, need shelter. If their number increases, of course that creates additional pressure in times of crisis, especially if successive governments, both in Ottawa and in Quebec, have not invested sufficiently in social housing.
The Legault government’s diversion strategy is cynical to say the least when we know that it itself opened the door wide to temporary foreign workers in order to meet its labor needs without having to increase its immigration targets permed. We constantly talk about an “explosion” of temporary workers, as if it were an unexpected phenomenon, exclusively imposed by the Trudeau government. By presenting things this way, we fail to specify that the Legault government itself chose to favor the arrival of temporary workers to the detriment of other categories of immigrants, notably candidates awaiting family reunification, who have already accommodation that awaits them2.
With regard to asylum seekers, if it is desirable that they be distributed equitably between the different provinces in order to ensure that they have, with adequate financial support from Ottawa, a roof over their head and the services of welcome they need, let us remember that we are talking here, despite the increase in requests, of less than 2% of the Quebec population.
First and foremost, we are talking about human beings seeking refuge, fleeing conflict and persecution, to whom we have obligations under the Geneva Convention. Making them bear the weight of social crises that existed long before their arrival in Quebec is unfair to say the least. To blame them for not being able to immediately respond to the needs of the labor market when they put their bags here because their lives are threatened is to adopt a dehumanizing and utilitarian vision of humanitarian immigration which betrays the reason for it. be and does not do justice to the long tradition of welcome which has been the pride of Quebec since the Quiet Revolution.
What would be 100% responsible at a time when anti-immigration speeches are trivialized would be to remember it and not throw this beautiful heritage in the trash.
1. Read “Asylum seekers: Ottawa offers 750 million to Quebec”
2. Read “Love in the Age of Migration Ping-Pong”
