By Ruby Pratka
Local Journalism Initiative
On Oct. 31, Quebec Minister of Immigration, Francisation and Integration Jean-François Roberge announced an eight-month moratorium on two popular programs aimed at giving skilled workers and international students a pathway to permanent residence and eventual Canadian citizenship.
Roberge said no applications for a Quebec selection certificate (CSQ) through Quebec’s regular skilled worker program (known by its French acronym PRTQ) or for the Quebec Experience Program for recent university graduates (known as the PEQ-Diplômés) would be accepted until June 30, 2025. Immigrants living in Quebec who want to apply for permanent residence must first have a CSQ issued by the Quebec government.
A spokesperson later clarified that applications submitted before Oct. 31 would be processed; 3,090 applications for the PEQ-Diplômés and 9,261 applications for the PRTQ were being processed as of Oct. 1.
The moratorium “gives us room to maneuver to carry out a thorough reflection for the next immigration plan,” Roberge told reporters. He also said the freeze would allow Quebec to keep the number of permanent immigrants for 2025 “controlled, at around 64,000 people,” adding, “If we hadn’t taken this courageous decision, it would have been around 70,000.”
Employers’ groups and advocates for immigrants expressed alarm at the news. “The lack of qualified employees is the number one obstacle to sales and production for small- and medium-sized businesses,” said François Vincent, Quebec vice-president responsible for Quebec affairs at the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, in a statement. “It’s true that we are facing pressure on housing and that it’s appropriate to adapt immigration to the needs of the labour market. However, given Quebec’s demographic profile … hasty decisions that significantly reduce the level of immigration will leave their mark. There will be negative impacts for employers, employees and the regional economy.” No one from the Chambre de commerce et d’industrie de Brome-Missisquoi was available to comment at press time.
Le Québec, c’est nous aussi (LQNA; “We too are Quebec”), a provincewide youth-led immigrant rights group, expressed its “profound worry.”
“To be eligible for either of these programs, a person needs to show a certain level of French proficiency. Those who are eligible for the PEQ-Diplômés program, by definition, are already in Quebec and have obtained a diploma from a Quebec post-secondary institution. This freeze [is not] an efficient measure to counteract the so-called pressure put on the system by immigrants. It … brutally slams the door on a number of workers already established in Quebec,” LQNA said in a statement.
Frey Guevara is executive director of Solidarité Ethnique Régionale de la Yamaska, a Granby-based nonprofit which helps immigrants in the greater Granby region and Brome-Missisquoi find housing and navigate bureaucracy. He said the freeze on the two programs would likely result in an uptick in applications in other categories, as people look for legal ways to stay in the province. “We haven’t gotten many calls yet, but we’re expecting a wave of calls,” he told the BCN a few hours after the announcement.
“There are a lot of international students whose families have invested a lot for them to study and stay here, and to have everything fall apart like this is dramatic,” he added. “People have done a lot to qualify for an existing program and then from one day to the next, it’s not there anymore.”
Guevara suggested that “it might be a good idea” for the government to inform affected people of policy changes in advance, to give them time to plan. “There are whole families here, and we need to give them a chance to get organized.”