More than 430,000 new permanent residents in 2022, 447,000 in 2023 and 451,000 in 2024: this is the ambitious objective set at the start of the year by the Canadian federal government in terms of immigration. The goal ? Supporting economic recovery…and filling labor shortages. After gaining some 400,000 permanent residents in 2021, a historic record, the country wants to do even better. If immigration is mainly economic (56%) – the result of federal programs, such as Express Entry, or the Provincial Nominee Program – it is also linked to family reunification and the reception of refugees.
In a statement welcoming the good results for 2021, the federal government recalled that “with the notable exception of Indigenous peoples, all Canadians are from elsewhere…” In fact, since the arrival of the first settlers – French, then British – the country was built on immigration. For a long time, the newcomers were mainly European, until the establishment, at the turn of the 1970s, of the points system, which allows selection according to, among other things, their qualifications.
The main attractions of Canada? Opportunities for employment, professional and personal development. This is true for the whole country, but particularly marked in Ontario, where the economic capital, Toronto, is located – its inhabitants, of multiple nationalities, speak a hundred languages -, as well as in British Columbia, in Alberta, even in the Maritime provinces and the Far North.
Consensus does not mean unanimity
If the values of immigration and multiculturalism are widely supported by the federal government, “that does not mean that there is no debate, notes Daniel Béland, director of the Institute of Canadian Studies at the “McGill University. Because consensus does not mean unanimity. Thus, the Conservatives, in opposition, would like fewer refugees and more economic immigration”.
Moreover, in the French-speaking province of Quebec, the subject takes on a specific dimension. “The government of François Legault is certainly in favor of immigration, but places more emphasis on integration than on multiculturalism, whereas this is the dominant approach in the rest of Canada”, adds- he.
The main issue, in the Belle Province, is of a linguistic nature. Fears that immigration will swell the number of English speakers on the island of Montreal, which has only 55% French-speaking inhabitants, are strong. “Hence the desire to promote Francophone immigration and to do so even more markedly in the future,” concludes Daniel Béland. What to continue to attract the French, already numerous in Montreal in particular, where even a district, that of the Plateau, is nicknamed the “Little Paris”…