Madam Speaker, I wish to inform the House in advance that I will be sharing my time with the member for Berthier—Maskinongé.
The Bloc Québécois has decided to devote today's opposition day to the issue of immigration. I will give a bit of background to explain why, but basically, on November 1, 2023, so last year, the Bloc Québécois decided to devote its opposition day to immigration. We unanimously passed a resolution calling on the federal government to review its immigration targets for 2024, after consulting Quebec, and the provinces and territories, to verify their integration capacities in terms of housing, health, education, francization and transportation infrastructures. The aim was obviously to ensure successful immigration.
Today, we remember this vote because despite the fact that the vote of November 1 was unanimous, less than an hour later, the Minister of Immigration left the House to announce new immigration thresholds of 500,000 new immigrants, without consulting Quebec. It would be hard to believe that he could have held a proper consultation in less than an hour before announcing these new thresholds. In fact, this borders on perjury after voting with everyone in favour of our motion.
We are back at it today because there is currently a fundamental problem in the Quebec nation, but also in Canada: our integration capacity has been exceeded in housing, health care, education and francization structures. At some point, this no longer works.
We are calling on the government to sit down with the different provinces and territories and ask them for their respective integration capacities. Once the government has their integration capacities, it will have to provide a revised plan for its measures within 100 days to have the 2024 immigration plan truly correspond to the integration capacities of each.
The much-touted target of 500,000 immigrants that the minister mentioned is essentially what the century initiative policy is all about. This policy was put forward by Dominic Barton who was, at that time, head of both the consulting firm McKinsey and the Canadian finance minister's advisory council on economic growth. The initiative's goal was for Canada to reach a population of 100 million by 2100. At the rate the Liberals are going, we will reach that goal much sooner.
There is this vision that Canada is going to become a bigger country with a large population. Therefore, we need to bring in as many people as possible to grow the economy, with more people and more demand. They are right about the demand; there is indeed more of it.
When the Bloc Québécois devoted an opposition day to the Century Initiative on May 11, 2023, and said that it did not reflect Quebeckers, the Liberals replied that it was not their policy. However, when you look at their actions, that is exactly their policy and that is exactly the direction they are taking as a government. In fact, it is a bit like someone going to see their doctor and saying, hand on heart, that they no longer smoke, that they have quit and are done with cigarettes, when all the while they are smoking a pack a day in secret. That is more or less it. Basically, the Liberals are saying that it is not their policy, but in reality, that is what they are doing as a policy.
Why do we oppose the Century Initiative, the Liberals' secret policy? It might be interesting for people who may be watching us to understand that it is simply because Quebec's current capacity to integrate immigrants has been exceeded. We are in the middle of a housing and inflation crisis, and our schools, day cares and hospitals are overflowing. The pool is overflowing, but the Liberals want to put more water in it.
Canada is truly delusional in its ideology, which obviously comes from the Liberal Party. Their vision of the world is one of massive, uncontrolled immigration, and there are absolutely no facts or data that could stop them from moving in that direction.
I might try to illustrate this for the people watching our debates. These 100 million people, this direction Canada wants to take and this famous Century Initiative, are they really the cure-all? Will Canada automatically become twice as rich or much richer just because it has a population of 100 million?
What are the famous countries that have at least 100 million people on the planet? Among those that have a population of more than 100 million we have China, India, the United States, Indonesia, Pakistan, Brazil, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Russia, Mexico, Ethiopia, Japan, the Philippines, Egypt, Vietnam and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Anyone who knows the financial reality or the GDP per capita of these countries will never claim that they will become fabulously rich. In fact, when we look at the GDP per capita of these countries according to the World Bank, we see the following numbers: China, $21,500; India, $8,400; Indonesia, $14,600; Pakistan, $6,400; Brazil, $34,000; Nigeria, $5,800; Bangladesh, $7,400; Russia, $36,600; Mexico, $21,500; Ethiopia, $2,800; Japan, $45,500; the Philippines, $10,000; Egypt, $15,100; Vietnam, $13,400; and the Democratic Republic of Congo, $1,300. We are talking about GDP per capita: in the Democratic Republic of Congo, people live on $1,300.
Almost all of the countries that I named, except the United States, are poorer than we are in terms of GDP per capita. Is having a population of 100 million really an automatic cure-all? I think that the numbers are clear and that the answer is no. We are not going to become wealthier by bringing in more people. We need to bring them in the right way, in the right circumstances. We need to have the infrastructure to support this population increase.
Like everyone else, immigrants need to eat and so they go to the grocery store. They need a place to live so they look for a house or an apartment. They need care when they get sick and so they go to the hospital. They need schools and day cares for their children. Every time we add a person, we put more pressure on those services.
There comes a time when everything reaches a breaking point, but that is not the villainous immigrant's fault. If everything is reaching a breaking point, that is the fault of the person who let that immigrant in. They knew full well that everything had reached the breaking point. This notorious person—or, in this case, group of people—is the government in power, sitting there on the other side of the House, the Liberal Party.
Bringing in people who will not have a roof over their heads and who are going to have to go to food banks to feed themselves is not having a vision for society, at all. In fact, it is deeply irresponsible.
I will continue by sharing a few numbers. In 2007, there were 47,000 temporary immigrants in Quebec. Today, there are 470,000, an explosive increase. In Canada, there are 2.5 million temporary immigrants. In 2023, the Canadian population grew by more than 1 million people. However, while the population increased by 1 million, barely 150,000 housing units were built. Clearly, 150,000 housing units for 1 million people is not going to work. People do not need a Ph.D. in mathematics to understand that this does not work. In Quebec, there are about 200,000 new people for approximately 40,000 new homes. That does not work either, and, no matter how hard we try, it is impossible to come to the conclusion that it does work.
Yes, we need to increase the number of housing units being constructed, but members will understand that it is impossible to maintain the thresholds that would mean taking in the same number of people that we did last year. The current policy is unsustainable.
That is why Premier Legault, from the Quebec government, wrote to the federal government not long ago to let it know that there is a problem. At the beginning of the school year last year, there was a shortage of 8,500 teachers in Quebec schools. We had to run 1,150 new emergency classes to receive new students, integration classes for people who are new to the country. That is the equivalent of 50 elementary schools. That is a lot of people, and it obviously puts a strain on our system.
When the Bloc Québécois talks about immigration, the Liberals and some of the other parties like to say that we are talking about immigration because we do not like immigrants. That must be true; I dislike immigrants so much that I am having children with one. My wife is an immigrant. My two daughters are actually immigrant girls, because I had two daughters with my wife, who is an immigrant. The truth is that I am always very happy to learn about the stories of people who arrive here after having travelled all over the world to come and meet us and discover our nation. As a member of Parliament, I organize receptions to welcome these newcomers who are settling here. People who come here need to be properly welcomed in French, but unfortunately, that is not what Canada offers them.
