The federal government has rejected the Quebec Premier’s demand for $1 billion in compensation for welcoming more than “half a million” temporary immigrants and spending a disproportionate amount on social services to support them from 2021 to 2023.
Instead, the French-Canadian province is being offered $750 million by Ottawa for absorbing a surging number of migrants, according to CBC News.
The Quebec Premier, Francois Legault, has expressed his disappointment with not being able to claim the whole amount he was seeking from Trudeau.
“We will take the $750 million,” the Quebec Premier told reporters after his one-on-one meeting with Trudeau at the Château Frontenac.
“We would have liked it better if it was $1 billion but we’ll take the $750 million.”
In other areas, especially, Ottawa did not deliver what Quebec expected it to.
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Quebec is looking to reduce asylum seeker numbers by 50 per cent within a year, along with reducing wait times for issuing work permits to refugee claimants to keep them off social assistance, as per CBC’s Holly Cabrera.
“Yes, I’m disappointed because I think it’s about time that we put targets, with figures,” Legault said with regards to the temporary immigrant numbers, including the number of asylum seekers in Quebec.
“The problem is urgent. We cannot say we will continue working for months and months about the principles. It’s about time we put some targets.”
Trudeau, at a separate press conference, said that before committing to a specific number, he needs Legault to provide him with a plan.
“Quebec has direct or indirect control over more than half of temporary immigrants in Quebec,” he said.
“So to have targets to reduce immigration, if that’s what Quebec wants, they have to present a plan to reduce or to adjust their numbers to respond to their needs. That’s what I asked Mr. Legault.”
Between March 22 and November 21, 2023, the Quebec Labour Ministry data shows the province having received 80,151 requests for social assistance, in comparison to the 72,221 for the same time-frame in 2022.
This, according to CBC News, is the largest jump in the number of households receiving social assistance in the past 25 years.
The ministry also detailed that the monthly average of asylum seekers more than doubled between 2022 and 2023, going from 19,455 adults to little over 40,000.
Trudeau warned Legault against blaming immigrants for housing shortages and the strain on social services.
“I think that we see across the country there are a lot of challenges regarding social services, housing, health care, for which immigrants can’t receive all the blame,” Trudeau said. “Canadians know well that it’s not always the best thing to target, and say everything is the fault of immigrants. It’s something some people use in their arguments, but it’s always more complex than that.”
This meeting was the second time the two leaders met on the topic of immigration in just three months. The last meeting, held in March, ended in Trudeau outrightly rejecting Quebec’s demand for full powers over its provincial immigration.
Legault had said that Trudeau had agreed to consider some of Quebec’s other dissatisfactions with the state of affairs surrounding immigration – which were addressed on Monday by the Premier and Prime Minister.
Ottawa, for one, has agreed to faster processing for asylum claimants. While the current processing time is between 18 and 20 months, Trudeau said that Ottawa will process 20 per cent of asylum cases within nine months.
Ottawa also said that it will reduce the current 100 days it takes for the government to deliver a work permit to an asylum seeker to 30 days by October.
