The head of a major employers’ group in Quebec says an election campaign is not the time to have a serious discussion about immigration.
Campaign slogans and political messages aren’t suited for rational conversations about how newcomers contribute positively to the economy, argues Karl Blackburn, president and CEO of the Conseil du patronat du Quebec.
“We are very much aware that these are sensitive issues, particularly around language,” Blackburn said.
Three weeks in, party leaders have not shied away from putting immigration front and centre in the Quebec campaign.
The debate has so far been superficial, focused on numbers -- parties have been accused of “one-upping” each other with immigration targets -- and the ambiguous concept of the province’s “capacity to integrate” newcomers.
Most notably, Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) Leader François Legault clumsily tied immigration to “violence” and “extremism” -- comments he then walked back.
Though, days later, he told a campaign crowd that non-French-speaking immigration threatens “national cohesion” in the province.
During Thursday night’s leadership debate, Legault warned that if Quebec doesn’t gain more powers, it could end up like Sweden, which is struggling with a crime wave linked to immigration.
Blackburn, meanwhile, says Quebec has the capacity -- and desperately needs -- to accept up to 100,000 immigrants a year to address labour shortages negatively affecting the quality, price and availability of goods and services across Quebec.
That number is a non-starter for Legault, whose party has a commanding lead in the polls and wants to keep the level of immigrants at 50,000 per year -- the maximum, he says, that Quebec can integrate properly and teach French.
Political scientists and economists, however, say there isn’t any research that offers definitive answers to how many immigrants a society, including Quebec, can welcome.
For Pierre Fortin, professor emeritus of economics at Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), Blackburn’s number is “wacky” and would bring “administrative chaos” to society.
Increasing immigration levels to more than 80,000 a year, he says, risks creating “xenophobia and racism” toward immigrants and pushing voters into the arms of people who would drastically cut the number of newcomers to the province.
Mireille Paquet, a political science professor at Concordia University, strongly challenged that theory, adding that the research is inconclusive.
“What we know for sure,” she said, “is that what causes the backlash (against immigrants) is not, per se, the number of immigrants but feelings of insecurity in the non-immigrant population and that feeling can be brought up by public policies such as cutting social services… It’s something politicians can address.”
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