Madam Speaker, I would first like to note that I will be sharing my time with the member for Terrebonne, who is going to give us a hard-hitting speech. She said so herself.

Quebec or McKinsey? For our part, we choose the first option. Clearly, Ottawa is choosing the second. By meekly accepting the targets set by a sprawling firm, a state within a state, Ottawa is the real armchair quarterback here, to use the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship's term. He claps and hurls insults at dissenting voices, accusing them of xenophobia and so on.

The faucet metaphor is generally used to describe the phenomenon of immigration. People talk about valves, but they also sometimes talk about faucets. The purpose of a faucet is to adjust the rate at which water flows, depending on how full we want the glass to be. It we do not want it to overflow, we slow down the flow a little. We adjust it. It pays to be careful, and this needs to be handled with care. Before the Minister of Immigration accuses me of comparing immigrants to drops of water, let me make it clear that this is not the case. I am using the faucet metaphor, which has been used before.

Delegating something as important as immigration thresholds to big business is as irresponsible as wanting to ban all public debate on the issue. Ottawa is obviously acting in bad faith. Ottawa not only refused to confer with Quebec, it did not even bother to warn Quebec of its plans to increase its immigration threshold. A major crisis could be looming, and pointing that out is in no way xenophobic.

The number of temporary immigrants has skyrocketed in Canada in the past year. Statistics Canada puts the figure at 2.5 million, which is a 46% increase in one year, the largest ever recorded. In Quebec, the non-permanent resident population has also increased by nearly 46% to 470,000. Last fall, the Legault government's immigration minister, Christine Fréchette, asked Ottawa to review its immigration thresholds accordingly, since Ottawa wants to take in 500,000 permanent immigrants per year starting in 2025.

Quebec and the provinces are best placed to know the reality on the ground. To me, accounting for integration capacity in terms of health services, education, language and housing seems to be the foundation for successful immigration. It is the foundation for guaranteeing that every newcomer can have halfway decent living conditions. When I say that a crisis is looming, I mean there are consequences in terms of housing. My colleague from Longueuil—Saint-Hubert is very knowledgeable about this and could talk about it much better than I could.

We are already experiencing a serious crisis. In the major city in my riding, Saint‑Hyacinthe, we often engage with cities that are not far off from holding the dubious honour of having the lowest vacancy rates in Quebec. Some villages are so full that they are are even worrying about the use of potable water. Space is more than limited.

In a report from September 2023, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, or CMHC, says that Canada as a whole needs 3.5 million additional housing units by 2030 according to the baseline scenario, and that is contingent on “the current immigration policy ending by 2025”.

Another CMHC report, this one from 2024, explains the rising costs as follows:

Strong demand for rental housing in Greater Montréal is largely attributed to population growth. Net migration to Québec more than doubled in 2023...with the arrival of a record number of non-permanent residents (net of nearly 150,000 new residents).

CMHC goes on to explain:

The metropolitan area attracts the largest share of non-permanent residents in the province—namely international students, temporary workers and asylum seekers—most of whom rent. Migration's solid post-pandemic recovery therefore contributed to the strong rebound in rental demand in the area.

In 2023, 872,000 Quebeckers had to resort to food banks. One in 10 Quebeckers cannot afford to eat. With the price of rent and mortgage payments rising and more and more people living in precarious situations, it is clear that now is not the time to increase immigration levels so drastically.

That also means that there will be an impact on public services. Immigration entails engaging various services, for example, French training, education, legal aid, child care, welfare, social services, health care services, temporary housing and help finding housing. Every newcomer must be able to access these services, with dignity. However, in order for them to do so, these services must be able to meet the demand.

Ottawa sees immigrants as symbols. One could even say that Ottawa takes them hostage and throws them into the jungle without a compass because newcomers are the main victims of the increased immigration thresholds. Then, after sending newcomers out into the jungle, Ottawa has the nerve to paint a romantic picture of immigration to ensure that the public sees its decisions in a good light.

Increased immigration thresholds also have economic and cultural impacts. I would like to quote something that was said by the late Milan Kundera. He said, and I quote:

What distinguishes the small nations from the large is not the quantitative criterion of the number of their inhabitants; it is something deeper: for them their existence is not a self-evident certainty but always a question, a wager, a risk; they are on the defensive against History, that force that is bigger than they, that does not take them into consideration, that does not even notice them.

His description fits Quebec perfectly: a small nation whose survival has never been a permanent guarantee. Quebec is already struggling with integrating newcomers into French-speaking society. According to demographer Alain Bélanger:

In order for immigration not to anglicize Quebec, 90% of new arrivals would have to choose French. At present, the figure is between 50% and 60%, and that's not about to change.

At this rate, our language could very well die out. That threat will drastically increase if these new targets come into force.

Needless to say, Ottawa has not conducted any studies on the impact of its targets on linguistic dynamics in Quebec. Anglicization looms. We are at risk of becoming another Louisiana, even as Montreal wants to create a “French quarter” like the one in New Orleans. The result would be a French quarter in a city that is officially French, but is becoming increasingly anglicized, in a francophone province, in a country that is officially bilingual, but is in fact English. I do not know if everyone gets what I am saying, but that is what would happen. I hear one of my colleagues suggest that it is like Elvis Gratton.

Let us refuse to be just another community. We are a proud nation. We must have full and complete freedom to control our immigration levels and what diversity should be within our borders. The best way to avoid xenophobia is precisely to ensure harmonious integration into the host nation. For that to happen, we need a realistic and achievable vision.

The problem is that there are two nations with two separate visions for managing diversity. One is tainted by the ideology of multiculturalism, and the other wants inclusion and a shared national culture. We have two nations and two visions. The solution is to have two countries.

Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay

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