- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- NDP
- Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie
- Quebec
- Voting Attendance: 64%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $114,314.06
- Government Page
- Feb/8/24 4:14:19 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I particularly enjoyed the end of my colleague's speech, the part about compassion.
This is because of not her comments or because of the motion the Bloc is presenting, but in some Quebec media, some columnists are using a sort of intellectual shortcut and conflating higher immigration with the housing crisis we are experiencing, as if immigrants arriving today were responsible for the shortcomings of the past 30 years in terms of investment in social and co-operative housing.
We see the vacancy rates in Montreal and Rimouski. If there is 0% housing available in Rimouski, it is not because of immigration.
I would like my colleague to comment on this shell game that is being played to try to blame immigrants for a crisis that the federal Liberal government caused in 1994 when it stopped investing in social housing.
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- Feb/8/24 12:12:57 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague is absolutely right. If we are serious about giving rights to temporary migrant workers who come here and protecting them, we have to be able to change how things are done.
These people have no status and are at risk. In two of the immigration minister's mandate letters, the Liberal government promised a process to regularize the status of undocumented workers. He has done nothing. Meanwhile, people are being exploited before our eyes, in our country, even as we say we respect workers' rights.
It is disgraceful.
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- Feb/8/24 11:57:11 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I wish to inform the House that I will be sharing my time with my wonderful colleague from Vancouver East. I also want to note that the representative from the Conservative Party did not answer her very good question whatsoever. The Conservative Party seems to want to hide its intentions when it comes to immigration objectives. Other than fine speeches, the official opposition remains vague and is kind of playing secretive games. I think it is a shame that my colleague from Vancouver East did not get the response she was entitled to when she asked a very simple and very direct question to the representative of the Conservative Party.
Today's debate is an important discussion that sometimes gets people, the media and certain columnists worked up. It is an entirely legitimate question on the type of society we want to build, the type of welcoming nation we want to be, the economic development we want to have and the contribution of people who want to come share their life here, with us, in Quebec or in Canada.
There is a joke I have been making for some time. Obviously, Quebec and Canada are lands of immigration. I myself am a 13th-generation immigrant. The first one came in the late 17th century. His name was Jean, and he was a potter, a “turner” to the king. Incidentally, the name Boulerice was not written that way at the time; initially, it was a Breton name spelled as two words.
I think we need to continue this tradition of integration and of welcoming people that we have had for centuries. However, it has to be done well and in a positive way. It must also be done with a positive eye to the contribution of all those who, for various reasons, want to come and settle here in the hope of a better life, to seek protection or to flee persecution, or to hope for better things for their children and families.
These are people who work extremely hard and contribute to our development and economic activity in extraordinary and wonderful ways. According to recent statistics, 33% of recent immigrants start their own small businesses when they arrive here, and then hire people who have sometimes been here longer. These are entrepreneurs and job creators, people who also contribute to various sectors of our society.
Twenty percent of immigrants are working in the construction industry. We are in the midst of a housing crisis, and these people are coming here to work. Yes, they live in houses and apartments, but they are also going to build houses and apartment buildings. One in five immigrants works in construction. That is a lot, and it is important to point that out.
A total of 1.6 million immigrants across the country are working in our health care system. They are caring for our friends, our parents and our grandparents, for people in Canada who are sick. That is an huge number.
When we talk about immigration levels and immigration capacity, we need to look at it from that perspective. Immigration is not only positive, but it is necessary for our economy.
Most of the chambers of commerce are saying that there is a labour shortage in Quebec and that we need hands and minds to join our workforce. It is not every day that members will hear a New Democrat quoting chambers of commerce, but the NDP agrees that this is what is needed. The need for workers is being felt throughout Montreal and the regions of Quebec. Businesses want to do more and take on more contracts. They want to undertake new projects, but they need workers to be able to do so. We therefore need to be able to welcome immigrants and welcome them properly.
I will say right off the top that I have no idea if Quebec should welcome 50,000, 70,000 or 35,000 economic migrants. I am not an immigration expert, demographer or economist. It all depends on the context, our needs and whether we can properly welcome and integrate them. Once again, the notion of integration capacity is very vague.
Obviously, we are in the middle of the housing crisis right now. Our public services are feeling the pressure. The community groups that work with those immigrants and refugees are feeling the pressure. We need to acknowledge that, but closing the door to immigrants is not necessarily the answer, because that would cause collateral damage to our economic development and to our SMEs and businesses that need those people. We need a tailored response that is smart and, most importantly, based on evidence and reality. We do not need speeches that can sometimes be quite discriminatory or xenophobic towards the people who come here.
This happens on a fairly regular basis with some columnists, and it seems to me a terrible shame that immigrants are being singled out and blamed for things like the housing crisis. It is utterly ridiculous. How dare we blame today's immigrants for our inaction over the past 30 years on building affordable and social housing? How dare we tell immigrants that they stopped us from building social housing over the past 30 years? They came here and they want to participate, start a family and send their children to school and university. This housing crisis is the outcome of inaction by Liberal and Conservative governments in recent years. The housing crisis existed before these immigrants and temporary migrant workers arrived here to work and make a contribution. For some columnists to point fingers and blame them is irresponsible, discriminatory and misguided.
The federal Liberal government stopped investing in social and co-operative housing in 1994, and that is when the problem started. Then the Harper government made it even worse. That is a fact.
The reality on the ground today is that the vacancy rate is 1.5% in Montreal, which gets a lot of newcomers and immigrants, and 0% in Rimouski. The housing shortage is worse in Rimouski than in Montreal, and it is not because Rimouski gets a lot more immigrants per capita than Montreal.
It is important to set the record straight. NDP members think it is important to be able to do that. My colleague, the member for Vancouver East, will share some constructive suggestions later on that will enable us to examine every aspect and every nuance of this issue. Quebec's former immigration minister said that immigrants do not want to integrate, do not want to speak French and do not want to work. Let us stop saying that. It is not true.
I live in Montreal. There are a lot of newcomers who work extremely hard. They all work extremely hard. They want to build a new life here in Quebec. They make an absolutely extraordinary contribution. They want to learn French. The problem is that there are not enough teachers. There are not enough French training services. The wait lists for French classes are endless. Part of the reason is that the Government of Quebec is not using the funding it is given by the federal government to help immigrants learn French. It uses it for other things, but that is another debate. Still, saying that these newcomers, these workers, do not want to integrate, do not want to contribute and do not want to speak French is not only shameful and irresponsible, but it is also completely false when we look at what is actually happening.
Last Friday, I had the opportunity to meet with representatives of an organization in Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie called the Table de concertation des organismes au service des personnes réfugiées et immigrantes. They made the same observation that we need these people. The debate about the number is a bit of a distortion in itself, but the reality is that these groups that help these people settle and manage the administrative tasks with the schools and hospitals are overwhelmed and do not have the resources they need. That is where our governments, here in Ottawa and in Quebec City, must do more to support those people on the ground, who are there to ensure good integration and who are able to do so. Our capacity to welcome immigrants relies heavily on these community groups that do not have enough and are overworked at this time. They themselves are telling us that it is not because there are too many immigrants, it is because they do not have the human and financial resources to do a good job.
We need to build more housing; that is true. We need to build social and affordable housing. However, I think we have to look at the next logical step. Immigrants did not cause the housing crisis. Immigrants should be welcomed by us, whether they are asylum seekers, refugees or economic immigrants, who are selected by the Government of Quebec, by the way, with points for knowledge of French. Let us do better.
I look forward to questions from my colleagues. I will be pleased to provide answers.
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- May/11/23 11:42:47 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, before I begin, I would like to say that I have the honour and pleasure of sharing my time with my colleague, the member for Vancouver East.
Today we are seized with a motion that opens up a debate, which is clearly necessary and could very well be done for any public policy. A discussion of immigration, immigration levels, integration capacity, language, living together and living in harmony is always welcome, just as we would talk about public policies on health, the environment, international trade, and so on.
However, as La Presse columnist Rima Elkouri says, approach is everything. That is the point I want to make. Beyond the specific language it contains, this opposition motion is part of a wider political context where the issues of immigration and integration are being used as political tools.
Before I go into those details, however, I would like to read my colleagues a poem. I do not do this sort of thing every day, but I would like to read a short poem by Gérald Godin, one of Quebec's great poets. I really enjoy his work. This poem was transformed into urban art near the Mont‑Royal metro station, not far from my riding and my home. I would like everyone to keep these words in mind:
at 7:30 a.m. the Montreal Metrois full of immigrantsthose peopleare up earlyare they the reasonthe city's aging heartstill beats?the city's worn and aging heartspasmodic occludedmurmuringflawedit has every reason in the worldto stopto give up
I see this tribute to immigrants, who get up early to go to work, every day and every week in the Montreal Metro in my riding, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie.
Last weekend, I had the honour of participating in a graduation ceremony for a social integration enterprise called PROPRET. The graduates, 90% of them immigrants, most of them women, went through housekeeping training and follow-up. Many of the people in the program also get French training. Diplomas were awarded to 67 people who have been through tough times but who work very, very hard and often struggle. However, they were proud of what they accomplished and of their successful integration into the labour market in French. It was wonderful to see.
I think we need to highlight these successes and this reality on the ground. This is what is really happening. The disaster that had been predicted by some news media has not happened. They like to light fires to get attention and clicks and thus make a profit.
It also reminds me of a documentary called Essentiels, by Sonia Djelidi and journalist Sarah Champagne, about temporary foreign workers. There are several beautiful stories in that documentary, but also some painful ones, because we really need these temporary foreign workers, which the Premier of Quebec seems to have just realized.
Edyn, a Latin American man, said that he worked 10 hours a day, had to take care of his two children who were going to school and cook for them, and that his wife had remained in their country of origin, with children as well. He said he did not know when he would have time to take French classes. He had tried to fit them into his schedule, but it had been difficult and he had failed several times.
Edyn eventually graduated, but the reality on the ground is that people have two or three jobs and work 60 or 70 hours a week to be able to make ends meet. They are told they just have to learn French, but it is not that easy. It makes for a good slogan on a leaflet or a button but, in the real world, these people are just trying to survive.
I also want to talk about Mamadou. People called him a guardian angel while he worked in long-term care facilities during the pandemic. He caught COVID‑19. Despite all his work and his knowledge of French, he is now threatened with deportation. That is the kind of case we see in our offices. That is the reality on the ground.
That is why the debate on immigration levels to Quebec has become a bit toxic and unhealthy, because there is a lot of vocabulary being used to divide people, namely, us, the old-stock Quebeckers, the historical majority, versus them, the newcomers who are being singled out. That is really unfortunate. There is not a lot of that kind of rhetoric in today's motion, but that is why I am saying that we need to pay attention to the context, which has been ongoing for many years.
We have had reasonable accommodation, the charter of values, very closed-off and discriminatory secularism, and negative language that has led to all kinds of problems. These are not just empty words.
In the most recent Quebec election campaign, candidate and minister Jean Boulet claimed that 80% of immigrants do not work and do not speak French. He said that during the election campaign, when he was minister. However, it is completely false. According to statistics from the Institut de la statistique du Québec, in 2021, close to 75% of immigrants spoke French.
I have said it before in the House, but we need to stop talking about how a mother tongue is such an important indicator of the health of French in Quebec. The purpose of Bill 101 was and still is to ensure that the mother tongue indicator no longer makes any difference. The idea behind Bill 101 is to ensure that, even if first-generation immigrants do not speak French and are unable to learn it, their children will learn it and integrate into our Quebec society. That has been a success. There are a lot of children of Bill 101 in my circle, and one of them lives with me.
We also have to be serious when we talk about whether Quebec is receiving the funds it needs to integrate immigrants into French-speaking society. Once again, the reality in the field contradicts what some, like Coalition Avenir Québec, are saying. In an article published last year in La Presse, journalist Joël‑Denis Bellavance wrote that, of the $697 million that the federal government sends to Quebec for teaching immigrants French, 75% was used for purposes other than French courses.
Instead of complaining and saying that its integration capacity is stretched to the limit and that the federal government is not doing its fair share, maybe the Quebec government should do some soul-searching and consider spending this $700 million on French courses for immigrants who want to learn French but are being forced to wait a long time.
Minister Boulet was not the only one to speak this way. Premier Legault calls immigration an existential threat. He warns that Quebec will become the Louisiana of the north and says that recklessly raising the number of immigrants would be suicidal. Those are weighty words. They taint the whole debate around integration capacity, immigration rates and Quebec's levels. I would point specifically to the front page of last Saturday's Journal de Montréal, with a headline that translates to “Quebec is caught in a trap”, followed by subheadings such as “French forced into decline”, “They want to assimilate us” and “Two worst-case scenarios”. One columnist, Mathieu Bock-Côté, talks about “demographic drowning”, echoing certain satirical cartoons that show a massive wave of immigration. That is tantamount to saying that we are being invaded.
I do not know the semantic difference between demographic drowning and replacement theory, but we hear about a lot it from figures on France's far right, including Marine Le Pen and Éric Zemmour. They evoke the spectre of the disappearance of the Quebec people under the threat of immigration, when we should be using more positive language to refer to newcomers, in the spirit of dialogue and openness. Instead, they play on insecurities and fear, including the fear of the other. Fear of the other leads to insular attitudes and close‑mindedness, division in our society between the original population, a concept that leaves out indigenous peoples, and our capacity for integration.
I do think we need to be vigilant. French is a minority in North America and always will be. We need to make an effort to protect and promote French. We need to pay attention to social cohesion and our capacity for integration. However, social cohesion comes with open arms, openness, support, not demeaning attitudes, finger-pointing and viewing immigrants as a threat to the Quebec people or the French language.
I am rather dismayed that, after all these years, we are having a debate that is extremely toxic and negative. Quebec is fully capable of working with the municipalities and the federal government to welcome people properly, make them future Quebeckers and stop seeing them as threats to Quebec culture and identity that need to be rejected out of hand. It is an extremely dangerous slippery slope. With this type of motion, at this time, in the current political context, I think we need to cross our t's and dot our i's.
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- Feb/17/23 11:15:26 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, for years now, a secret world has existed right alongside ours, without our noticing.
Without these thousands of men and women, there would be no agricultural production, no abattoirs, no food processing. There would be fewer security guards, fewer cooks, fewer maintenance workers and fewer people to care for our seniors.
These individuals are indispensable, but invisible. With no legal status and living in precarious situations, they are sometimes even exploited. They do hard but essential work, and yet are regarded as disposable. Without the rights and protections that we take for granted, they live on the margins, far from their families, often prisoners of closed work permits that make them vulnerable.
I am talking about temporary migrant workers. Quebec has welcomed three times more of these workers since 2015, totalling tens of thousands of people every year. The NDP is proposing that they be granted permanent residency. This would give them proper recognition and provide some hope.
In October, the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship said he was working on a comprehensive program to regularize non-status people. This initiative is critical. If we do not want to live in a society that has a second class of workers, it is the right thing to do.
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- Jun/14/22 2:16:22 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, in the 11 years that I have been a member of this House, I have never seen this before.
The government services currently being provided to the public are awful, a total disaster. People are lining up at 3:00 a.m. in the hopes of getting their passports. One woman in my riding has been waiting for her EI cheque since February. This is June. Has anyone here ever tried to speak with someone at Service Canada? You have a better chance of winning the lottery.
I know of one case involving a foreign-born nurse who is going to lose his work permit if the deadline for his permanent resident status is not met. Let me be clear. We risk losing a nurse from our health care system because Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada is not doing its job.
There are hundreds of cases like this. Our business owners are tearing their hair out, and people are living in uncertainty and anxiety. One of the essential duties of any government is to provide good services in a timely manner.
I am asking the Liberal government to get its act together and, out of respect for Canadians, allocate the resources needed to make things work.
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- May/19/22 4:06:37 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to talk about this government's inability to deliver basic services. The immigration department has been a disaster for years. There are incredibly long, intolerable delays. We recently saw that the government is unable to issue employment insurance cheques, making people wait three or four months.
Anyone who wants to travel abroad must first have a passport. However, getting one right now takes forever. People are really worried about next year's vacation. Passports have predictable, set expiry dates. How is it that this government is unable to predict that more resources are needed to produce more passports?
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to learn that the NDP is in government, because I was not aware of that.
The Liberal government is incapable of providing services to Canadians. The immigration delays are a catastrophe. The unemployed find it impossible to talk to someone about employment insurance. Now there is a crisis with passports, even though everyone knew that people would want to travel when the pandemic ended.
Is my colleague seeing the same thing in his riding? People may well have to give up their plane tickets and their travel plans because government offices cannot meet the demand for passports.
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- May/6/22 11:28:21 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, for the past two years, immigration processing times have been ridiculous. Thousands of people are waiting. They have no idea what is going on, and the government is not treating them with respect.
These are human tragedies, uprooted lives and broken dreams. The Liberals can see that, yet they do nothing.
They tell people to contact their MP, but our offices can only handle five applications at a time. This is insane; we are getting dozens of desperate calls every day.
When will the Liberals commit the necessary resources to treat these people with a modicum of respect?
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- Mar/1/22 11:50:41 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.
I believe I was quite clear in my speech. The equality of citizens is clearly a basic principle of democracy, but the demographic formula is not the only one we use. There are several others. We have shown that. This has consequences for the Prairies, the Maritimes, and Quebec as well. We can consider this discussion because we live under a system that has multiple criteria and exceptions.
As for immigration, I would say that Quebec and Canada are countries of immigrants. We are all to varying degrees sons and daughters of immigrants, except for the indigenous peoples and the Inuit.
I would like to see Quebec welcome more immigrants. I think that is also a good way to solve the problem of the labour shortage. However, at this time, the Government of Quebec makes decisions about economic immigration, as it should. It is up to Quebec to decide.
Personally, I believe that a good part of the solution to Quebec's political weight is demographics and immigration. It would also help solve the labour shortage.
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