Kevin Paquette: The Parti Québécois forced a necessary immigration debate

Leader of the Parti Quebecois (PQ) Paul St-Pierre Plamondon speaks to the media following the third and final televised Quebec election debate in Montreal, Quebec, Canada on September 23, 2026. Quebec voters will cast their vote on October 5. Photo by GRAHAM HUGHES /POOL/AFP via Getty Images

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From the very start of the Quebec election campaign, Parti Québécois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon made it clear that immigration would once again be one of the defining issues. By proposing to cut the number of temporary immigrants in the province by half and reduce permanent immigration to roughly 35,000 people a year, the PQ leader has reignited a debate that, predictably, quickly became polarized.

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It took only a few days for the discussion to move away from the proposed levels and from Quebec’s actual capacity to welcome and integrate newcomers. Québec solidaire co-spokesperson Ruba Ghazal was quick to ask the PQ leader to define “what is a Quebecer?” Liberal leader Charles Milliard, for his part, accused PSPP of operating in a “gray zone” when discussing immigration.

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Welcome to Quebec’s immigration debate. A debate in which, all too often, questions about motives take precedence over questions of policy. And this tendency is nothing new.

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Back in 2016, then-Liberal premier Philippe Couillard accused François Legault, at the time leader of the second opposition group in the National Assembly, of “fanning the flames of intolerance” after Legault questioned Quebec’s capacity to increase annual immigration from 50,000 to 60,000 newcomers.

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Ten years later, the language has changed, but the reflex remains essentially the same. As soon as someone questions an immigration target or a politician raises the issue of integration capacity, they quickly become suspect.

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Yet, if we do not want to surrender the immigration debate to the extremes, we need to be able to ask a simple question openly: how many people are we actually capable of welcoming and integrating successfully?

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It’s a tough question. Integration capacity is not a magic number set in stone. It evolves over time and differs from one region to another. It depends on available housing, the capacity of our schools, access to French-language instruction and, more broadly, our ability to integrate newcomers into Quebec society. Social cohesion also has to be part of the discussion.

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A region facing a labour shortage and a declining population does not face the same reality as a major urban centre where housing, schools, and public services are already under significant strain. We should be mature enough as a society to recognize those differences and discuss them openly.

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The economic realities specific to certain regions and sectors also matter. The labour challenges faced by certain industries are very real and deserve to be taken seriously. But they should not, on their own, dictate immigration policy.