- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Bloc Québécois
- Mirabel
- Quebec
- Voting Attendance: 64%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $114,073.56
- Government Page
- Oct/31/23 10:30:35 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, first, let me applaud my colleague for her excellent speech, which set the tone for what is sure to be a most peaceful opposition day.
We are here today to debate federal immigration targets because we are in never-before-seen circumstances in our history—certainly of our recent history. We have to talk about numbers, but we can do it calmly. If the 2024 federal targets are reached, immigration will account for 1.21% of the Canadian population by 2024. If the 2025 targets are reached, the percentage will increase to 1.24%. The last time rates that high were observed was in 1928-29. Back then, Montreal had a population of 819,000. Toronto was a cornfield with 631,000 residents. We can all agree that our arguments about resources and integration capacity do not come out of left field.
In January 2023, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada had nearly 522,000 people waiting for permanent residence. Another 239,500 people were waiting for express entry economic immigration. If we look at historical data and include family members, we arrive at the equivalent of 2.3 million people—yes, I said “people”, and not “cases”—who are waiting. This means that we run the risk of exceeding these historic targets by even more. Quebec was not consulted in all this. No one ever called on Quebec. Quebec stated its wish to be consulted, and today, a consultation process is under way in Quebec City. There can be no denying that immigration has to serve the interests of newcomers and the host society.
I would like to add a personal note. The woman I married was born in Algerian; she is Kabyle. She came here with her family in 2001. They are people who made a good living in their country of origin. They made many sacrifices before arriving here. They left behind family, property, home and friends. They started over at the bottom of the ladder. They managed to find a small place to live. It was not very nice, incidentally, because newcomers rarely have access to the nicest homes. Over the years, they met with success in their immigration and integration journeys. One day, my father-in-law and my mother-in-law decided that they wanted to own their own home, which was impossible in Montreal, even back then. It was expensive. They managed to move to a suburb a little ways away. They had a house built. They got on the property ladder to secure the future of their family and children. I recently asked my father-in-law what would have happened if they had arrived here in 2023. His response was a long silence. Then he told me that their dream would have been shattered. These are the people we are thinking about.
In 2011, a scientific study co-authored by Fuller showed that the health of immigrants had deteriorated since they arrived in Canada. In 2010, Houle and Schellenberg published a study showing that a large proportion of immigrants said that, if they had to do it all again, they would not choose to come to Canada. McKinsey and the Century Initiative will not tell you that. They are more concerned about the number of people needed to fill the short-term labour demand than they are about the actual people. Immigrants are people. They are people we care about, people who become our friends and family. We marry them. We live with them. They are here for the long term. They will be here until they are 80 or 90 years old. They will have children and be part of our society. The answer that we get when we talk about immigration targets is that we need workers in the short term. There is an incredible disconnect here.
Today, if we talk to the government or read what reporters are saying, we see that they are telling us that immigrants will just have to build their own homes and work in the construction industry. They are basically telling us that we are going to give immigrants a kit from Ikea so that they can build their own home. It is difficult to describe. Housing is the elephant in the room. The government is always talking about the housing supply as if it can wave a magic wand and build 50 million housing units a year and offer these people the same quality of life as we have.
When we speak to bankers or to people in finance or housing, we are told that if all the bricklayers, electricians, plumbers, carpenters and roofers in Quebec worked full-time, 40 hours a week, winter and summer, we could build 75,000 homes. We recently reached a record in 2021 by building 68,000. This year, in Quebec, we will build approximately 30,000 to 40,000 homes. Before the thresholds were increased, the Canada Housing and Mortgage Corporation said we needed a minimum of 100,000 homes. That means people will be left living on the street. That means homelessness.
Before, whenever we said things like that, people would say that we were anti-immigration, that we did not like immigrants and that we were racist. Now, all of a sudden, Toronto says there is a homelessness problem, a housing problem, an affordability problem and a problem with resources, especially in the area of health care. All of a sudden, this has become a national crisis and is no longer seen as xenophobia.
How come the government can increase targets overnight without notifying Quebec, yet Fatima, a newcomer from Morocco, cannot get a spot in day care for her children the way a Ms. Tremblay whose family has been here for generations can? Where is the gender equality in that situation? This is a major problem with the government's perspective.
Now reporters and the government are telling us that the concept of integration capacity is just smoke and mirrors, that it does not exist, that there is no scientific definition for it. Funnily enough, in July, economists from the University of Waterloo wrote a paper on immigration, the conclusions of which I will quote: “Absorptive capacity can be thought of as how quickly the economy can expand private and public capital investments...Quickly expanding the level of immigration may place excessive stress on highly regulated sectors such as healthcare, education, and housing”.
I am prepared to table the scientific article by these growth economists from the University of Waterloo. Immigrants are not cases, numbers or figures. When we talk about immigration thresholds and integration capacity, we are talking about success, French language training, the availability of health care and education. We cannot live under the false premise of “us” versus “them”. The immigrants who are here are best placed to say what it takes to live here, to realize their dream and to integrate into employment.
People who have been here for many generations have never had to leave their family, friends, home and job behind. They have never had to do this. When I talk to groups in Mirabel that welcome immigrants, and when I talk to friends, family and foreign students at UQAM, where I taught until recently—foreign students who are being stonewalled by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada—these are the people best placed to understand what we want to do, which is to welcome them properly.
We want immigration to succeed. We want every person who arrives here to succeed. We want the best for everyone, regardless of where they were born or how many generations they have been here. We plan immigration for us and for them, because they are also part of “us”. This is a collective effort. It is not just a figure or a number. Right now, it is mainly the federal government and the chambers of commerce that are treating them like numbers, because they want short-term unskilled labour. Personally, I want each of these people to succeed, to become richer and to reach their full potential as a person. Immigrants are not votes. They are human beings, neighbours, people we live side by side with every day, full-fledged members of Quebec society.
It is in this context, where immigration is part of our vision of society, that Quebec society must be heard. Quebec is not being heard, and it wants to be heard more. This is why we are holding this opposition day. I would like to say to each person who has had the courage to come here, to make Quebec their home, that they are welcome, that we love them, that they are our neighbours and that what we want for them is full equality with those who have been here much longer.
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- May/31/22 5:55:06 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, speaking from my own university experience, especially on the research side, it is an extremely competitive environment.
Never—or hardly ever—would a university turn down a candidate with high research potential who will publish and make the university look good regardless of that candidate's skin colour or ethnic origin.
My sense is that the Liberals and the NDP think our motion presupposes that, in the absence of federal criteria, universities would engage in discriminatory hiring practices.
I think that is deeply insulting to the research community in Quebec and Canada, a community made up of highly educated people who are very much in favour of diversity.
I would like to know what my colleague thinks of that. Is that kind of thinking across the way an insult to our institutes of higher learning?
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- May/31/22 12:31:53 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, let us be clear. Education and the funding of universities and university research fall under provincial jurisdiction, and thus are Quebec's responsibility.
Judging from the questions from the other side of the House, there would be no inclusion and diversity in Quebec unless Ottawa imposed conditions. It is as though they are saying that letting Quebec do its job results in racism and exclusion.
I would like my colleague to comment on the government members' perception of Quebec.
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- May/31/22 12:16:31 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we hear about all kinds of averages and the Canadian average.
Research facilities do not reflect society perfectly. They have evolved with the times. We need to be very careful about all the statistics used to apply averages to this, that and the other thing. That does not work.
My colleague is right. It has been harder for minorities and women for many years. Scholarships have been created and efforts have been made to increase inclusion awareness. This has been the case in Quebec and at Quebec universities. There is still progress to be made and work to be done to encourage more people like Marie Curie and Amartya Sen, magnificent Nobel Prize winners.
Imposing conditions today and preventing Quebec universities from hiring professors will not improve the quality of research. It is the Liberals, not us, who are playing politics with inclusion. It is important to note that they are actually hurting inclusion in the long run with this, because they are directing their energy to the wrong place.
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- May/31/22 12:14:58 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, people are putting words in my mouth again. That might be because my speech was so good.
Eliminating these rules will not break down years of work. People want inclusion and integration, and I can attest to that based on my own career experience and my colleagues'. Every province, like Quebec, is responsible for funding and managing post-secondary education. Ottawa cannot tell the provinces what to do, period.
If the member wants to get involved in that then she should move to provincial politics.
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- May/31/22 12:13:42 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member is putting words in my mouth.
Members know, and I will repeat, that I spent my life in academia. It is a place where we find the people who are most educated about, open to and aware of diversity. It is not true that we are opposed to having inclusion criteria, but it is not up to the federal government to set out such criteria. This is not the right legislature for that. Teaching and research funding are part of higher education. It is part of that. That is how doctoral and masters students are guided. It is the responsibility of the Government of Quebec.
The Liberal Party's vision is the following: If the Liberals did not set out the criteria, then there are no criteria. The Liberals cannot seem to figure out that such is not the case.
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- May/31/22 12:02:20 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, today I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot.
We are talking about research funding in a provincial jurisdiction, meaning Quebec's jurisdiction, and we are talking about it here in the federal Parliament. Clearly, there is already a problem. What is even more problematic is that these criteria for awarding Canada research chairs are not a lesson in democracy. It is not a lesson in democracy because they were introduced in 2000 and this is the first time we have debated them here in the House.
Regardless of what the NDP members say, it is healthy to debate, even if they do not like it. This is especially true given that we have never debated this matter here, thoughts have not been shared, and what I have heard today shows a complete lack of understanding of the academic world. I would very much like to hear what the Minister of Health has to say about this motion, as he is a professor at Laval University. I hope he will have the opportunity to speak.
Let us go back in time. Let us look at the Liberal legacy with regard to funding public services, particularly that of Paul Martin in the 1990s. What was done then? From the first half of the 1990s until 1998, cuts were made to health transfers and social programs, leaving provinces in so much trouble that they had difficulty funding their public services.
Of course, as time went on, health care took up more and more space in the provinces' finances and came to cannibalize all other government responsibilities, including funding for higher education, preschool education and elementary school education. Ottawa's actions left the provinces in turmoil.
Moreover, in the mid-1990s, there was a referendum in which half of Quebeckers said no to Canada. What did Ottawa do? It decided to plant its flag all over provincial jurisdictions. It started with the sponsorship scandal, one of the worst Liberal disgraces in history. It continued in the late 1990s with the millennium scholarships, when a jurisdictional squabble took place with Quebec. The Liberals thought that Quebec's financial assistance to students was not doing the job. They had to get involved.
Since the provinces were in trouble because of the cutbacks, Ottawa said it would create these research chairs. This is the typical old Liberal reflex: they place the provinces in a tight spot, they wait awhile, then they come to the rescue. First, there are no conditions, but, with time, more and more conditions are set, which are expensive for the provinces to administer. Thus, 22 years later, here we are today to discuss the matter.
The issue with the criteria has nothing to do with inclusion or exclusion. Quite simply, the federal government has no business in the matter. It is none of its business. The Liberals will claim they established these criteria to satisfy the courts. However, the courts are only involved because the Liberals are involved. If they had minded their own business, the courts would never have gotten involved in their programs.
Today, we find ourselves with all kinds of criteria for hiring professors. These criteria impede academic freedom, even though professor recruitment is under the purview of the universities, the professors and the researchers.
I am a university professor. I have participated in the meetings to hire professors. Hiring a researcher is such a delicate situation that even university HR departments do not get involved, whether we are talking about McGill University, Laval University or the University of Toronto. However, here we have the smart alecks from the NDP who are able to tell us, in a convoluted way, how researchers should be hired in fields they know nothing about.
I will explain to the House how a professor is hired. Let us say, for example, that there is an opening in the economics department at UQAM. There is a particular need for someone who specializes in health economics, and 300 people apply. After we eliminate those who do not speak French, we still have between 100 to 110 applicants remaining. Unlike the Liberals, we think that French is important in Quebec. Of those applicants, there are some who specialize in all sorts of fields that are not needed, such as macroeconomics and the like, so we have to sort through all the applications. We are left with between 50 and 60 excellent candidates from all over the world, because the market is global. Then, we have to interview about 40 of them. Some of them fail the interview, so we are then left with a short list of about 20 to 25 candidates. Of those 20 to 25 people, we will choose the best seven or eight to attend what is called a fly out. They are invited to present their research to other researchers who have knowledge of the field, unlike the Liberal Party and the NDP. In the end, a professor is selected and offered the position.
What happens then? Sometimes the person who is offered the job will turn it down because our public services are poorly funded and we do not have the means to pay our researchers properly.
Off they go to France, Great Britain, or back to the United States. Even francophone Quebeckers, who have long been under-represented in academia since before the Université du Québec came to be, no longer want to come to Quebec because our institutions have a hard time paying them. We move on to our second choice, our third and our fourth and we do the best we can. In the end, the shortlist is whittled down to one or two candidates who are the only ones we can hire. That is how it works in universities.
Some people here think that introducing new criteria and making this costly process even more burdensome makes it easier to hire skilled people. They obviously know nothing at all about the sector. Like many of my colleagues, I spent the past 20 years in and around academia. Every time researchers were hired, the most important criteria were gender equality and the integration of cultural minorities. Every time we managed to hire researchers, those criteria were met without the help of federal government conditions or the Canada research chair program. These criteria expose the Liberals' moral narcissism. It is their way of signalling that they are better than anyone else.
What happens in the short term when criteria like these are imposed? Sometimes a few candidates who are members of a visible minority or women qualify for the position. However, because of these criteria, every university wants them. If we are unable to hire them, it is because we cannot afford to increase salaries because of the current salary scales. The money is in Ottawa, and Quebec City has been “defunded” once more in its history, so we do the best we can.
This brings me to Quebec's reality and the Liberals' vision of diversity and inclusion. At the Université du Québec à Rimouski, for example, there is a marine sciences department. There is also the Université du Québec en Abitibi‑Témiscamingue. The Université du Québec has campuses in several different regions, and in some places, the local social makeup makes it hard to recruit researchers. In these places, these criteria are doubly, triply and quadruply limiting. Once again, the universities pay the price, because the Liberal method is to impose conditions but not pay.
The federal government tells us that to have diversity every university needs to reflect the average. When diversity is just an attempt to reflect averages that is a big problem. These conditions substitute appearance for competence. The Liberals know about that because that is how they chose the Prime Minister.
However, our universities need to be independent and have academic freedom. It was universities and their rules that gave us the Enlightenment and that gave rise to the greatest research we have today. Every university and every department across Quebec and Canada knows this and is already acting accordingly.
The government is not telling us that this requires diversity. It is telling us not to trust Quebec to manage its own university sector and research funding. Criteria exist to include diversity, but that is up to Quebec, not the federal government.
Where do we go from here? The universities need to keep working on diversity and inclusion, but the federal government needs to leave them alone. The government needs to stop interfering in research because that is not its wheelhouse, because it is ineffective and incompetent. Personally, I do not get involved in areas of expertise that I know nothing about.
We need to get rid of these ineffective rules that are costly for the Quebec government and the universities and that violate long-standing traditions of academic freedom. These rules are adversarial and punitive, and they are poisoning the work environment of our universities. I will repeat that I participated in departmental meetings to hire professors where these inclusion criteria were used, and it is not an easy process.
What should we do? We have to be proactive, restore funding to the provinces and increase student scholarships. We must ensure that those involved in hiring university professors, as I was, have access to a pool of competent people and have all the necessary options. The moral narcissism of the Liberals and the NDP will not result in better research.
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- May/31/22 11:44:48 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I do not have a question for my colleague since I doubt that he will answer it.
I simply want to inform him that when he throws out statistics, within faculties, for example, he is referring to professors who might have been hired in 1987, 1988 or 1989, and not just ones who were hired recently. I am a university professor, so I am part of the academic community.
It worries me that there are some members in the House who cannot count. I wanted to point that out.
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