- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Bloc Québécois
- Drummond
- Quebec
- Voting Attendance: 68%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $108,134.67
- Government Page
- Oct/31/23 5:08:56 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be happy to share my time with my friend the member for Berthier—Maskinongé.
I will read the motion again to refocus the debate, but also the intention behind this Bloc Québécois opposition day.
The motion reads as follows:
That the House call on the government to review its immigration targets starting in 2024, after consultation with Quebec, the provinces and territories, based on their integration capacity, particularly in terms of housing, health care, education, French language training and transportation infrastructure, all with a view to successful immigration.
I insist on the last point, because I hear a lot of speeches, debates and questions that are somewhat aimed at some very specific aspects of immigration in general. However, the Bloc Québécois wants to debate and make the House of Commons understand that a piecemeal approach is not appropriate and it is not a matter of having, for example, more doctors to treat people. This is not so much what we need as new hospitals altogether.
Back home in Drummondville, the hospital is outdated and crumbling in many ways. It is not just about a staff shortage. There is also a lack of infrastructure. It is not a problem that can be identified, addressed or resolved by saying that things went well in one area, we managed to bring in a doctor from Algeria and just like that we have services in one specialty or another.
We have to think about Quebec as a whole, Canada as a whole when we talk about immigration. We have to be serious in this debate, which is extremely serious. We are talking about human beings, people who are going to settle in our country, in our communities. They are going to integrate. They will enrich our communities whether in Quebec or in one of Canada's provinces or in the territories.
Successful immigration, since that is what we are talking about today, means turning “them” into “us”, welcoming strangers and making them members of the family. Successful immigration does not mean strictly bringing in additional labour, but bringing more citizens to Quebec and Canada with all the characteristics that define citizenship.
We are talking, for example, about sharing a common language, common values. Newcomers participate in our society and in its growth. They enhance our culture. Newcomers are changed by their membership in their host society, just like the host society itself is changed and improved by their arrival.
We cannot think of immigration from a strictly economic perspective. It goes beyond money. Think about children playing in the park in the summertime and families of all origins who come to sing at the Quebec City summer festival, stuff their faces at the poutine festival in Drummondville, and participate in traditional and square dances at the Village Québécois d'Antan at Christmas time. Think about the artists from other countries who settled in Quebec and who combine their culture of origin with ours to create something new and beautiful. All of those things go beyond money.
However, the federal government sees things differently. Its immigration targets are based solely on economic considerations. By way of evidence, just look at the infamous Century Initiative, whose targets the government copied.
Dominic Barton from McKenzie was clear when he presented his initiative. It was designed based on economic growth only. Integration capacity, French language training, the integration of newcomers, none of that was important. It was ignored, set aside.
I would think that a plan to increase the Canadian population to 100 million people by 2100 deserves to be thought out, deserves a public debate. It seems to me that this should not be decided behind closed doors by consulting engineering firms and a few advisors with ties to the Prime Minister's Office, but instead debated openly with absolute transparency and an attentive ear. However, the government, who gave billions of dollars to this firm, took the McKenzie targets and made them its own.
Do we have housing for newcomers? That is not important, the newcomers will build their own housing. The government said so. The Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship clearly said that the newcomers would build their homes themselves. Picture them at customs being offered a small load of two-by-fours, some insulation and a few shingles. If they need a hammer, one will be provided to them. Honestly.
We may want to demonstrate the fact that immigrants will help solve the labour shortage, but with arguments like this, I would be a little embarrassed. The Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship took the liberty of answering a question from the member for Saint-Jean by saying that the Bloc Québécois's thinking is foolish, or something like that.
Are we able to provide newcomers with the services they will need? They will provide those services to themselves, because we will be welcoming care workers, nurses and carpenters. They will work in day care and they will build their own houses, as if by magic. Regardless of what they want to do, we will decide that they will do all that. They will come here and be straight-out independent, as my son would say. That is a bad joke.
There are immigrants coming to this country. They are not temporary foreign workers, but immigrants with dreams and aspirations. They want to be teachers or have some land to farm, or even teach philosophy—although we could debate that as well. They want to sell cars, be members of the National Assembly or the House of Commons and participate in the democratic life of their new country. They have their own aspirations. No one should develop a century-long immigration policy based on the lack of staff in a hospital at a specific time. We must think long term.
The Bloc Québécois believes that immigration targets must reflect our integration capacity. The Bloc believes that Quebec and the provinces are the ones who know best what this capacity is. How many newcomers can be accommodated, given the current housing stock? How many additional classrooms will be needed to accommodate new students in our schools? How many French teachers will Quebec need to integrate those who do not speak French? I will point out, and I will do so as often as necessary, that French is the only official and common language of Quebec.
These are legitimate and necessary questions, which unfortunately were not taken into consideration at McKinsey's Toronto offices. Over there, they think in terms of numbers rather than people.
Quebec is a welcoming society. No one doubts that. No one questions that, or at least I hope not. We welcome those who want to join us with open arms. It is a privilege to welcome people who want to make their lives here, who want to build a common future. We see this as more than a numbers game. We are going to take in 500,000, said the Liberals. When we asked them how they will manage to do that, they told us that we are anti-immigration.
We want immigration to work, and we want those who come here to be happy, or at least happy enough to want to make their home here. Taking into account French training, access to housing, health care, schools and child care is not being anti-immigration. It is being considerate. It is wanting immigration to succeed, both for those who join us, and for us. I believe that ignoring these factors is very careless.
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- May/11/23 1:20:18 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the Government of Quebec is already doing a lot of good things to manage immigration and to welcome francophone immigrants.
It is true that as far as my colleague from Hochelaga is concerned, other than a slight Hochelaga accent, we can say this is a perfect integration in French. She is a colleague that I hold in high regard.
Quebec often has its hands tied because of Ottawa, which manages immigration for the most part. The fact that Ottawa is looking to set immigration levels at 500,000 people a year is a big problem. The crux of the problem is the fact that this will create a huge imbalance in the demographic weight and in the political weight of Quebec.
I think that we could debate this at length, my colleague and I, but, essentially, we agree on the fact that there are a lot of fine examples of immigrants who were welcomed and integrated successfully.
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- May/11/23 1:18:29 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, that is a good question, and it fits in with what I said at the beginning of my speech.
We want to welcome and integrate immigrants. We do not want them to end up in ghettos in the areas where they will settle. In just about every Quebec municipality I know of, there are organizations dedicated to supporting and integrating newcomers. Who generally manages and sponsors these organizations? It is either the municipalities or the Quebec government.
Once again, there is a clear desire on the part of Quebec to make sure that we have the capacity and infrastructure to allow immigrants and newcomers to integrate, to take advantage of services, to send their children to school and to participate in society upon their arrival. Newcomers who integrate into Quebec communities in French are not a burden. They benefit society.
It is important to make sure we have the infrastructure, and for that, we must take into account our capacity to integrate immigrants. Otherwise, we would simply be doing a poor job, and we do not want to do that with immigration.
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