Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, right, and Quebec Premier Francois Legault meet in Quebec City on June 10.Jacques Boissinot/The Canadian Press
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pledged to pay $750-million to Quebec to help deal with an influx of asylum seekers that the province says has been putting pressure on housing, education and health care.
The funding, promised during talks between Mr. Trudeau and Quebec Premier François Legault in Quebec City on Monday, fell short of the $1-billion that Mr. Legault had asked for to cover the costs of providing for the rising numbers of refugee claimants over the past few years.
Speaking to journalists after the meeting, Mr. Legault said he would accept the extra cash from Ottawa but would hold out for more. He said he had asked the Prime Minister to halve the number of 560,000 temporary residents he says are now living in the province, and said their influx was responsible for the province’s housing crisis.
But Mr. Trudeau said that at least half of the province’s temporary migrants, such as temporary foreign workers, are approved by the Quebec government and he wanted to see a plan from the province itself to address the numbers.
“We know that Quebec directly controls over half of temporary migrants in this province by issuing them permits. We wanted to know what their plan is to address and to adjust those permits in a way that is responsible so that we can make sure we continue to grow the economy, respond to the labour shortages while ensuring the right absorption capacity for the province,” the Prime Minister told journalists after the meeting.
At the talks, Mr. Trudeau said the federal government aims to speed up processing of asylum claims, and to do more to distribute asylum seekers more evenly across Canada.
Quebec, together with Ontario, has seen a disproportionate number of asylum seekers arrive and require accommodation and access to public services, although not all those who arrive at Quebec airports and claim asylum remain in the province.
Speaking to journalists before the meeting, Mr. Legault said the “explosion” in the number of temporary migrants, including asylum seekers, in Quebec is putting pressure not just on housing, but on health services and education, as well as threatening the French language as many temporary migrants are not francophones.
When the Premier met the Prime Minister to discuss immigration in March, Mr. Legault asked for full jurisdiction over immigration to the province, a demand the Prime Minister refused.
Under the terms of the Canada-Quebec Accord, signed in 1991, Quebec is responsible for the selection of economic migrants destined for the province.
Last year, Mr. Legault announced that they will have to be able to speak and write French, in a move designed to protect the province’s francophone identity. All but economic immigrants with exceptional talents or a unique expertise, such as doctors, would be subject to the language bar to entry, he said.
In January, federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller announced that the federal government would provide an extra $360-million to provinces and municipalities to house the rising number of asylum seekers, with $100-million of the funds earmarked for Quebec.
Another $50-million for Quebec, from a previous round of funding unveiled last year, was designed to help the province house people fleeing persecution.
There are now about 2.5 million temporary residents in Canada, a number that includes asylum seekers, international students and people in the country on work permits. Earlier this year, Mr. Miller announced targets to reduce the proportion of temporary residents in the population to 5 per cent from 6.2 per cent over the next three years. That would decrease the temporary resident population by about 19 per cent.
Last month, talks about reducing the number of temporary foreign residents in Canada kicked off between the federal government and provinces, with Mr. Miller acknowledging that there needs to be better co-ordination to shrink numbers across Canada.
Ottawa set out measures in its omnibus budget bill to toughen the asylum regime and speed up the processing of refugee claims.
But last week, NDP and Bloc Québécois MPs on the House of Commons finance committee voted to quash the proposed asylum changes, including the suspension of refugee proceedings if the claimant is not in Canada. The government is expected to try to revive the measures when the budget bill returns to the full House of Commons.