New Quebec immigration plan will force some temporary foreign workers to pass French exam
If they want to stay, immigrant workers will have to show they can speak basic French
Quebec wants some temporary foreign workers to pass a French test to renew their work permits.
Premier François Legault, flanked by Immigration Minister Christine Fréchette and French Language Minister Jean-François Roberge, announced the measure at a Quebec City news conference on Wednesday as he presented the government's updated immigration plan.
"The message will be very clear as much for students as for workers," Legault said. "In the future, if you want to come to Quebec for more than three years, if you want to be received as a permanent immigrant, you need to speak French."
The immigration plan, which includes lower than anticipated target numbers for new Quebec immigrants, and the new rules requiring temporary foreign workers to pass a French test are part of the government's plan to stop what Legault and his ministers describe as the decline of the French language in Quebec.
"Across the board the indicators are red," Roberge said of language data in Quebec.
"French at work, French at home, consumption of culture and media in French, all of that is in decline."
Legault's CAQ government had previously anticipated increasing the number of permanent immigrants it would accept to 60,000. But, in the updated plan presented on Wednesday, they set their target number at 50,000 for 2024 and 2025.
Normally the government sets projections beyond two years, but this time, Legault said, they wanted to examine the data after accepting 50,000 immigrants per year and see the effect on the French language before deciding whether to set new targets.
Not included in that 50,000 figure, however, are the 6,500 students eligible to immigrate to Quebec through the Programme de l'expérience québécoise (PEQ), where they can remain in Quebec after completing a degree at a French-language university.
The French exam, which temporary foreign workers who are in Quebec under the PTET program (program for temporary foreign workers) will now have to pass if they want to renew their permit after three years, will verify that the workers can converse at a basic level in French. There will be no written component.
It will ensure they can "discuss with their entourage, exchange information on familiar themes, for instance, basic needs, everyday life," Frechette said. "It's important that people who spend several years here — even with a temporary status — can speak and understand French."
Agricultural workers will be exempt from the exam.
Employers will be required to provide time at work for the workers to learn French, Frechette said. But the details of that requirement are still being ironed out, she said.
Parti Québecois MNA Pascal Berubé, whose sovereignist party has begun to gain ground on the ruling CAQ in polls, criticized the immigration plan as too broad.
The CAQ is still welcoming too many immigrants, he said, hearkening back to a Legault election promise from 2018 when he vowed to hold immigration to 40,000 people per year.
He also ridiculed the language test requirement. Temporary foreign workers will be able to pass the test if they can order a coffee or a beer in French, Berubé said.
"If you can say that, 'three years more,'" he said.
The Opposition critic for immigration, Liberal MNA Monsef Derraji, said the government should improve the tools the province has to improve French rather than coming down on immigrants who are too slow to pick up the language.
"The weight of the French language in Quebec can't fall on the shoulders of immigrants," he said.
François Vincent, the vice-president of the Quebec branch of the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses, said the government's immigration target is too low to address the labour shortage in the province.
The language test requirement will also add more red tape for small businesses, he said. He hoped the government would expand the exceptions to the exam to other sectors, not just agriculture. Many temporary foreign workers work in the hospitality and restaurant industries, for example.
"It's a bad decision that will hurt small businesses that have these temporary foreign workers," he said.
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