Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attends a bilateral meeting with Quebec Premier Francois Legault in Montreal, on March 15.Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press
Michael Barutciski teaches law and policy with a focus on migration issues at York University’s Glendon School of Public and International Affairs.
This has been a contentious year between Ottawa and the Quebec government. In January, faced with a record number of asylum seekers in Quebec, Premier François Legault sent a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau requesting financial help and urgent measures to stem the flow. Since then, Quebec’s Immigration Minister, Christine Fréchette, has been engaged in public disputes with her federal counterpart, Marc Miller. And last week, at a summit in Montreal between the Prime Minister and the Premier, Mr. Legault announced that he wanted to “repatriate” the remaining immigration powers that Quebec does not already have control over. Predictably, Mr. Trudeau categorically rejected the request.
The upside of the summit is that even though both leaders have fundamentally different visions of immigration and federalism, they nevertheless took positive steps by addressing longer-term concerns about unsustainable levels of asylum seekers. Still, a more collaborative relationship won’t resolve tensions on its own. An honest and informed discussion on the asylum dilemma – the most complicated of Canada’s various immigration-related problems – is impossible without considering the effect of federal visa policy and the state of play in Quebec.
Two factors explain the historically limited number of asylum claims in Canada: our geographic isolation and our typically strict visa policy. But significantly more people are now accessing Canada’s asylum procedures because international travel is cheaper and easier, which mitigates the first factor, and Mr. Trudeau’s Liberals have been attenuating the second by quietly waiving temporary visitor visa requirements for hundreds of thousands of people to address a backlog. That decision was made despite warnings from immigration officials that it would likely prompt an increase in asylum claims once people arrived in Canada.
For all the moral posturing by our political leaders, Canadians should not be fooled into thinking that we have an open country that protects persecuted people unequivocally. Visa issuance is ultimately a discretionary act: when governments deem it necessary to protect the country, it is strictly controlled. Ottawa wants to project humanitarian solidarity, but there are always limits: For example, we continue to impose visa requirements on Haitians because we would otherwise be flooded with asylum seekers fleeing the chaos in their country. This selective use of visas is the quiet part that politicians do not say out loud, for fear they would appear hypocritical.
The summit outcome that will have the biggest effect on the asylum crisis is Mr. Trudeau’s signalling that visa policy will be tightened – essentially backtracking from the previous approach. As he explained following his meeting with Mr. Legault, working to reduce the number of asylum seekers is also the logical follow-up to his recent decision to reimpose visas on Mexicans. While the Prime Minister seems to have skilfully balanced firmness and openness during the summit, his shift on visas may be a discreet gain that amounts to a substantial achievement for Mr. Legault.
This is a win for the Premier at home. A resurgent Parti Québécois has been pressing for a referendum on immigration powers, but this would be rendered unnecessary if visa policy is tightened, decreasing asylum claims considerably. And if the plans for a follow-up meeting are respected, the provincial government will be able to show enough strength on that file that it will effectively have all immigration powers. For example, by having a say on the large number of foreign workers that Ottawa has been admitting under the International Mobility Program, Quebec can make sure these temporary residents speak French. More generally, controlling the number of admitted temporary residents will allow Quebec to better match its perceived absorptive capacity. While these are discretionary federal decisions, Ottawa can make sure it has Quebec’s consent. Other details, around asylum-related financial compensation and family reunification targets, will eventually be worked out.
In the meantime, Mr. Trudeau will need to do his best not to appear as if he is fixing self-inflicted problems, as he did around Roxham Road. If both politicians focus on resolving the outstanding issues and resist the urge to politicize immigration, then the summit will have been a surprising success for two leaders struggling in the polls.
Finally, one major aspect that is somewhat underestimated in English Canada is how Quebec’s political class believes that the Trudeau Liberals’ migration-related commitments contribute to an impression of the province as xenophobic. Mr. Legault has been pragmatically manoeuvring within this context, suggesting a strategic plan behind his predictably doomed request for full immigration powers.
So to avoid a new dangerous phase of constitutional turmoil, Canadians across the country need to understand why Mr. Legault is calling for more autonomy in the first place, and why that is so resonant with Quebeckers.