FIRST READING: Quebec could be in for the most anti-woke government in Canada

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“A PQ government would oppose from day one any immigration increase imposed by the federal government,” he said.

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Quebec, just like the rest of Canada, was hit by an unprecedented surge in temporary migration greenlit in the immediate aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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As recently as 2015, the number of non-permanent residents entering the province was about 3,600 per year. In 2023, the peak of the post-COVID migration surge, that number swelled to 125,092.

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Quebec has also been particularly hard hit by a wave of asylum seekers who began entering Canada at elevated rates beginning in 2017. Until it was closed in 2023, the Roxham Road illegal border crossing into southern Quebec was the primary conduit for such migrants.

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In 2023 alone, an estimated 60,000 asylum seekers registered in Quebec, resulting in “overflowing” homeless shelters, according to then Premier François Legault.

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An estimated 190,000 asylum seekers are still in Quebec, representing more than a third of the Canadian total of 500,000.

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Duhaime, for his part, made the issue a recurring theme of his campaign, stating that at least one third of asylum seekers had come to “profit off our social benefits” and pledging to cut their social benefits.

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He also proposed sweeping incentives to drive up the Quebec birthrate, which is at a historic low of 1.36 children per woman, even if it’s above the Canadian average of 1.25.

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The Parti Quebecois similarly rolled out a campaign promise to “slow the falling birth rate.”

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“Every Quebecer who wants children should be able to start a family,” PSPP said in a statement.

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For both Duhaime and PSPP, the issue hasn’t just been the raw numbers of immigration, but the risk of cultural dilution.

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In an April press conference, the PQ leader accused the federal government of succumbing to a “doctrine of postnationalism” that had caused it to embrace “open borders.”

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Canada, he said, was unwilling to acknowledge that this had caused a crisis of foreign interference, be it from China, India or the Muslim Brotherhood. “I think this idea of a postnational Canada is dysfunctional,” he said.

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Last week, as the PQ cruised toward victory, the Quebec conservative columnist Mathieu Bock-Côté said that it augured a Quebec “really turning the page on multiculturalism and unchecked immigration.”

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Although Quebec generally tracks left on issues such as assisted suicide, the province routinely features open discussions of topics that are still largely treated as untouchable by mainstream politicians in the rest of the country.

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Representatives of several mainstream Quebec political parties, for instance, are on record as saying that “multiculturalism” is a failure, including the province’s most recent immigration minister, Jean-François Roberge.

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“We think ghettoization does not serve social cohesion,” Roberge said last year.

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Quebec was also largely immune to an early 2020s phenomenon of Canadian institutions issuing reports and statements declaring themselves guilty of “systemic racism,” mandating land acknowledgements and implementing identity-based quotas in official hiring.

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In 2024, the Quebec National Assembly unanimously passed a motion endorsing merit-based hiring over EDI-style hiring based on identity quotas.

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IN OTHER NEWS

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One longstanding distinction between the U.S. and Canadian political systems is that the spouse of the Canadian head of government doesn’t have an official title or duties. This appears to be at an end now that Prime Minister Mark Carney gave his wife Diana a job as Canadian “Ocean Envoy” and then a week later had his government earmark $1.2 billion to “better protect Canada’s oceans.” Diana Fox Carney has actually been rather candid about how her husband’s job affords her opportunities and access she wouldn’t otherwise have. “I meet people and have access to conversations and things that I wouldn’t necessarily if I didn’t have him,” she told a podcast interview last month. Photo by PHOTO BY HYUNGCHEOL PARK/Postmedia

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Quebec’s election on Monday night also marked the complete electoral destruction of the Coalition Avenir Quebec, the party that has governed the province through two consecutive majority governments.