Legault promises to give asylum seekers working in CHSLDs a chance to apply as immigrants

2020/05/27 Leave a comment

Reality intrudes:

Quebec Premier François Legault says he will consider giving asylum seekers who work in long-term care homes a chance to stay in the province by applying as immigrants.

Legault opened Monday’s briefing by saying he has asked Immigration Minister Simon-Jolin Barrette to look at the situation, on a case-by-case basis, as a way of saying “thank you.”

The co​​​​mments represent a departure for Legault. The Coalition Avenir Québec premier has previously rejected the idea of giving any kind of preference for asylum seekers and others without status working in essential jobs during the pandemic.

But there have been growing calls for him to recognize their contribution.

On Saturday, supporters held a rally in Montreal and on Sunday, Fabrice Vil, a Montrealer of Haitian background, was critical of the premier on the popular French-language talk show Tout le monde en parle.

Legault, whose government has cut immigration levels, said Monday he would try to strike a balance between giving thanks to those working in the residences, known by their French initials CHSLDs, while at the same time not setting a precedent.

“We have to be careful. I don’t want to send the message that in the future we will accept everybody if they find a job in Quebec,” he said.

“But we also have another situation where it’s really critical to get more people working in our CHSLD. So those people, they are already working in CHSLDs. So how can we bring them via the normal immigration process? That’s what I’m looking at.”

Legault added his government would also have discussions with the federal government, which is responsible for refugee applications.

While the province says it has no record of the total number of asylum seekers doing work in CHSLDs, advocates say hundreds of people, many of them originally from Haiti, have been working as patient attendants.

Some have already had their refugee claim rejected, and may not be able to stay in Canada when deportations resume.

Protest at PM’s office

Protestors rallied outside Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Montreal office on Saturday, demanding he do more for asylum seekers who have been risking their lives by working in long-term care homes with COVID-19 outbreaks.

Frantz André, a member of the Action Committee for People without Status in Montreal, the group behind the demonstration, said Legault should be taking a stronger stand on the issue.

While the federal government makes the final decision when it comes to the immigration status of asylum seekers, provincial leaders are able to influence those decisions, he said.

“I think all the parties, including the CAQ, should have said in one voice, ‘Mr. Trudeau, you need to make a decision,'” André told CBC News on Monday.

“We as Quebecers, we are willing to give people an opportunity to be accepted, to be equally Canadian as anybody else.”

Source: Legault promises to give asylum seekers working in CHSLDs a chance to apply as immigrants

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Calls grow for asylum seekers working on COVID-19 front lines to be allowed to stay in Canada

2020/05/22 Leave a comment

No surprise at the calls and reasonable for government to be non-committal at this stage:

The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a light on the crucial role asylum seekers and others with precarious status play in Quebec’s economy.

They work long hours in meat-packing plants and warehouses, or tending to elderly people in long-term care homes — low-paying jobs that are difficult to fill.

But they may not be able to stay in Canada when deportations, which have nearly ground to a halt during the COVID-19 crisis, resume.

There are growing calls, however, from community organizers, advocates and opposition politicians in both Quebec and Ottawa for that to change.”What we realize more and more is that those failed claimants are working in essential services most of the time,” said Guillaume Cliche-Rivard, the president of Quebec’s association of immigration lawyers.

About 30,000 asylum seekers who crossed into Canada between 2017 and December 2019 are still waiting for their refugee claims to be heard, according to the latest figures from the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada.

Others whose claims have been rejected have applied for permanent residency on humanitarian grounds.

That process takes an average of 30 months, Cliche-Rivard said.

In the meantime, they are working.

While the province says it has no record of the total number of asylum seekers doing work in, for example, long-term care homes, Marjorie Villefranche, executive director of Maison d’Haiti, estimates that about 1,200 of the 5,000 Haitian asylum seekers the organization has helped since 2017 have become orderlies.Cliche-Rivard said the federal government should set up a program that speeds up the application process for permanent residency, and formally takes into account the contributions claimants have made to fast-track their application.

Doing so would offer “clear recognition of what those people have been doing for the province and for the country,” he said.

NDP wants a ‘special program’

The federal NDP is also calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to create a special program granting permanent residency to those working on the front lines.

“They are risking their lives to support others in the face of the pandemic,” said Jenny Kwan, the party’s immigration critic and the MP for Vancouver East.

Her party has tabled a petition on behalf of a Montreal community group that calls on Trudeau to, “show leadership by implementing a special program to regularize the status of asylum seekers working to fight COVID-19, and therefore supporting the health and safety of all Canadians, for humanitarian reasons.”

Federal Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino has given no indication the government plans to change the way it processes applications or make any exceptions.

But he said in a statement that, “all eligible asylum claimants receive a full and fair hearing on the individual merits of their claim.”

“Asylum claimants are allowed to work or study and receive basic health-care coverage.”

Legault’s party votes down proposal

Peter Kent, the federal Conservative immigration critic, suggested that Quebec, which has jurisdiction over immigration when it comes to economic applicants, “could move to accept these people as permanent residents” given the “extraordinary circumstances.”

It’s not clear if Quebec would have the power to do that — or if Premier François Legault’s government, which cut immigration levels in its first year in office, would be willing to if it could.

Last week, on the National Assembly’s first day back in session, independent MNA Catherine Fournier tabled a motion to recognize the contribution of “hundreds of asylum seekers, mostly of Haitian origin,” working in long-term care homes.

She said the province should ask Ottawa to, “quickly regularize their status, in order to recognize the work accomplished during the current health crisis.”Quebec’s three opposition parties — the Liberals, Québec Solidaire and the Parti Québécois — voted in favour of the motion, but Legault’s majority Coalition Avenir Québec voted it down.

When asked why, Legault avoided answering directly, saying instead he didn’t want the border to reopen to asylum seekers any time soon.

“That doesn’t mean that asylum seekers, including members of the Haitian community — that there aren’t good people who work in our long-term care homes,” Legault said Friday.

Frantz Benjamin, the Liberal MNA for Viau, which includes Montréal-Nord, said Legault’s response was shocking.

“It was not based on the question asked by the journalist,” Benjamin, who was born in Haiti, said Tuesday.

“Those people that we call ‘guardian angels,’ we need them. We have to recognize the work of those people, most of them women.”

‘Let’s walk together’

Over the weekend, a group of activists, artists and social entrepreneurs released a video paying tribute to asylum seekers in essential jobs.

The video came out Monday, on Haiti’s National Flag Day, which fell on the same day as Journée des Patriotes in Quebec this year.

“Both celebrations are about liberation movements,” said Fabrice Vil, a Montrealer of Haitian background and the founder of Pour3Points, an organization that trains sports coaches to help support kids struggling at school and at home.

He helped produce the video, called Je me souviendrai – Marchons Unis — a play on Quebec’s official motto, “I remember,” followed by, “Let’s walk together.”

The song in the video is set to the melody of La Dessalinienne, Haiti’s national anthem.

“The current pandemic is really showing that we all depend on each other — and that there are people that sometimes we don’t see as being relevant to our own lives who are currently sacrificing their own lives to support the collectivity,” Vil said.

Source: Calls grow for asylum seekers working on COVID-19 front lines to be allowed to stay in Canada

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Quebec relies on hundreds of asylum seekers in long-term care battle against COVID-19

2020/05/11 Leave a comment

The irony given all the Quebec (and elsewhere) rhetoric regarding irregular asylum seekers:

Sarah watches her four-year-old daughter jump around a play structure she’s not allowed on because of the pandemic.

They’re just happy to be outside.

For eight days, Sarah — an asylum seeker from Haiti who crossed the U.S. border into Quebec at Roxham Road three years ago — was bedridden in their small Montréal-Nord apartment, her body feverish and aching.

It had started with some coughing and a slight fever she had tried to brush off at first. Her manager at the private long-term care residence in Ahuntsic where she works as an orderly wasn’t happy when she’d asked to stop working, for fear of bringing the infection home to her asthmatic daughter.

Then more symptoms appeared. She was nauseous, and the cough and fever got worse. A test a couple days later confirmed she had COVID-19.

Now on the mend, three weeks after testing positive, Sarah says: “I’m proud. I was on the battlefield.”

Sarah’s refugee claim was rejected after her first hearing, then again on appeal. Her only hope at staying in the country now is to be granted residency on humanitarian grounds, a process for which she began the application before the pandemic.

Given her precarious immigration status, CBC has agreed not to identify her by her real name.

Sarah is far from the only asylum seeker working on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Many ‘guardian angels’ are asylum seekers

Marjorie Villefranche, executive director of Maison d’Haiti in Montreal’s Saint-Michel district, estimates that about 1,200 of the 5,000 Haitian asylum seekers the organization has helped since 2017 have become orderlies.

Frantz André, who helped found the Action Committee for People without Status, an advocacy group that helps asylum seekers settle in Montreal, says there are many more who’ve flown under the radar.

Asylum seekers make up a large portion of the “guardian angels” Quebec Premier François Legault has praised in his daily briefings — the orderlies, or préposées aux bénéficiaires (PABs), working in long-term care homes — who have no guarantee they’ll be allowed to stay in Canada.

“As quickly as they can, they want to find a job — and they’re being directed to jobs that no one else wants to do: the caregivers, PABs, security agents,” André said.

Without status, on the front lines

He and other refugee advocates have been calling on the Canadian government to allow asylum seekers already in the country to stay.

Many of them are hired by temp agencies, which offer people eager to work easy access to the labour market. For seniors’ homes desperately short of staff, the agencies are a source of cheap labour, but they operate with little government oversight.

The workers are often shuffled from facility to facility — a practice Quebec’s public health director, Dr. Horacio Arruda, has acknowledged is contributing to the spread of COVID-19 in long-term care centres, known in the province as CHSLDs.

André says the long hours they put in make the workers more prone to catching the virus and spreading it to their families.

He says it explains why Montréal-Nord, a low-income neighbourhood filled with newcomers, has the highest number of cases in the city.

“When you’re tired, you don’t eat well. You will go back home, and there’s four, five, six and sometimes seven people living in a [one-bedroom]. The chances of the people catching it, the family catching COVID-19, is greater than anywhere else,” André said.

It is also difficult for orderlies working for agencies to adhere to the province’s request that they work in only one long-term care residence, because accepting shifts wherever they’re asked to go is the only way to cobble together full-time work.

Another woman CBC spoke with works part time for a private residence and part time for an agency providing home care. Bouncing between visits to patients’ homes and shifts at the long-term care residence increases the risk of spread, but the woman said she feels she has no choice.

Problematic use of agencies predates pandemic

Long-term care homes have long been reliant on temp agencies to fill staffing holes — and the people the agencies sign on are most often women and newcomers to Quebec.

“Even before the pandemic, they had a lot of trouble finding people to do the orderly work,” said Prof. Nicolas Fernandez, a specialist in the relationship between health-care workers and patients who teaches family and emergency medicine at Université de Montréal.

“The short-term solution is to go to agencies.”

The reliance on temp agencies puts additional stress on CHSLDs struggling to contain outbreaks, said Fernandez, who has also served as a translator for asylum seekers.

CBC reached out to both federal and provincial departments requesting statistics on PABs, including how many are asylum seekers. Quebec’s Labour and Immigration ministries said they did not collect that information.

The Health Ministry didn’t provide a breakdown either, but offered up figures showing the vast majority of PABs are women — 34,821 of 42,340 in both private and public facilities. The average salary in 2019 was $40,551.

Fernandez says the job of a PAB is gruelling and crucial: they are the backbone of CHSLDs.

From the moment they wake up, most residents require extensive care — at least three hours a day — to have qualified for a bed.

“In order for the person to feel cared for, and not just a number, you need someone who is going to be there every day,” he said.

‘There’s no stability’

Sarah worked for two agencies to gain work experience after she finished her PAB course last year. She hated it — travelling as far away from Montreal as Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, in the Montérégie, a 50-minute commute made longer by the stops the agency’s van made to pick up other workers.

“There’s no stability. Every time, you’re sent to a different place. It gets really stressful,” she said.

For the past couple of months, Sarah has worked in the same private long-term care facility in Ahuntsic.

She loves her work. She likes helping and caring for people. It’s a far cry from the job she had in Haiti, working with a sports organization, but she hopes to be able to stay in Canada and work her way up in the health-care field, possibly becoming a nurse.

In the midst of this crisis, Sarah hopes the federal government recognizes how much asylum seekers have contributed to Canadian society and finds a way for them to stay.

“I hope the government will hear our calls, hear our voices.”

Group wants special immigration program

Those calls grew louder on Thursday, with a community group devoted to the rights of Haitians who crossed into Canada in 2017 asking the provincial and federal governments to implement a special immigration program for those working in CHSLDs.

“We find it hard to believe that these guardian angels may be expelled from the country once the battle is won,” the Concertation haïtienne pour les migrant.es said in an open letter.

“We are counting on your leadership to make a humanitarian gesture to these citizens who are fighting alongside us every day.”

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada responded to a CBC inquiry about whether the federal government was considering giving asylum seekers already in Quebec special status.

A spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the government would stick with the current process.

“Our immigration system continues to be based on compassion, efficiency and economic opportunity for all, while protecting the health, safety and security of Canadians,” spokesperson Shannon Ker wrote.

Source: Quebec relies on hundreds of asylum seekers in long-term care battle against COVID-19

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Douglas Todd: Time to end ‘honour system’ in Quebec’s immigrant-investor scheme

2020/05/09 Leave a comment

Good reminder of the scam that is the Quebec immigrant investor program and good for Richard Kurland for obtaining and analyzing the data that highlights just how much it is a scam.

Just as Quebec unduly benefits from the 1991 immigration accord that provides Quebec with greater funding per immigrant than other provinces, one that remains a fixed percentage of total settlement funding, irrespective of Quebec immigration levels, meaning that as Quebec decreases its immigration intake under the Legault government, the imbalance increases.

And good for the Conservatives under Jason Kenney for cancelling the federal program. When I analyzed citizenship data by immigration category, the lowest incomes (LICO prevalence) were reported by business immigrants as shown in the chart below (grouped under “Entrepreneur etc):

It’s time for Ottawa to end the honour system that allows nine of 10 wealthy immigrants to renege on their promise to live in Quebec.

Federal immigration officials have released information showing 91 per cent of the tens of thousands of applicants approved by Quebec’s Immigrant Investor Program in recent years have been exploiting a loophole in the plan, which critics consider a “cash-for-passport” scheme.

The Quebec program’s glaring flaw also illustrates a wider problem for the country and its provinces, says Vancouver immigration lawyer Richard Kurland.That is, Ottawa does not seem interested in trying to make all would-be immigrants to Canada follow through on residing in their declared “intended province of destination.” There are taxation measures that could be introduced, Kurland said, that could ensure more immigrants follow through on their stated commitments.

Even though Quebec’s immigrant-investor program is set to re-open this summer, after being temporarily suspended to deal with a backlog of more than 5,000 applications, critics don’t want to see it start up again under the same rules.

“There are two reasons Quebec’s program has been a failure, leading to abuse of the system,” says Burnaby immigration lawyer George Lee, whose clientele is predominantly from China.“It’s freezing cold in Quebec in the winter, so (many) people from Asia find the weather intolerable,” said Lee.

“Secondly, language-wise, there’s a problem. Most people in China learn English rather than French. As a result, many of Quebec’s investor immigrants don’t ever even fly into Montreal or Quebec City. They just use the Quebec program as a bridge to get to English-speaking cities in Canada.”

Kurland, who obtained six years of recent data on the more than 25,000 investor immigrants and family members who have never fulfilled their stated promise to reside in Quebec, said a simple new tax measure would likely stop the exploitation.

All Ottawa has to do is delay granting permanent resident status to newcomers to Quebec (or any other province) until they file an income tax return as a resident of their declared province of destination, said Kurland, who has frequently travelled to Ottawa to advise Parliament on immigration policy.For his part, Lee realizes that residents of Canada have mobility rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. But, like Kurland, he believes Ottawa could find ways to go further to ensure compliance to regional residency commitments than a misused honour system.

Lee worries Quebec doesn’t want to reform its immigrant-investor program.

“Quebec’s happy with the scheme,” he says, because the province gets substantial amounts of money injected into its coffers without having to provide new arrivals and their families with taxpayer-funded medical care, social services and education.The data obtained by Kurland under an access to information request shows that in 2017 only 342 of the 5,015 people approved under Quebec’s investor category actually had a primary residence in the province.

In 2018, just 518 of the 6,064 people approved were found to be living in Quebec. And up until October of last year, only 528 of the 4,136 approved were residing in the that province.


This chart shows over six years how nine of 10 applicants and their dependents approved as permanent residents under Quebec’s immigrant-investor program did not reside in Quebec. (Source: Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, via Richard Kurland)

The investor scheme has not been the only immigration program that provides unusually large financial benefits to Quebec. Because of a 1991 funding accord, Ottawa also provides Quebec with roughly four times as many taxpayer dollars to settle each of its immigrants as B.C., Ontario and several other provinces receive.

Meanwhile, an internal federal immigration document, also obtained by Kurland, acknowledges growing criticism of “golden-passport” schemes such as the one that remains in Quebec, the only Canadian province ever granted separate immigration powers.

The Immigrant, Refugees and Citizenship Canada report from 2019 reveals that four of five of the foreign investors who give or loan various amounts of money to a Pacific Rim country (or its regional jurisdictions) in return for a visa or passport are from China.

Most such investors simply want “peace of mind, a way out when the home country is experiencing turmoil,” says the IRCC report, which grew out of an international conference in Miami on “citizenship-by-investment programs.”

The immigration report refers to how the federal Conservatives cancelled Canada’s long-running national investor-immigrant program in 2014. The government of the day found few of the wealthy applicants ever invested in businesses in Canada or paid a significant amount of federal income tax.

Source: Douglas Todd: Time to end ‘honour system’ in Quebec’s immigrant-investor scheme

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Quebecers answer call to work on farms, but are they up to the task?

2020/04/28 Leave a comment

The productivity and cost benefits of foreign agricultural workers and the resulting dependence:

Melina Plante has found that, on her five-hectare fruit and vegetable farm south of Montreal by the U.S. border, one experienced Guatemalan farmhand can produce more than two Quebecers.

She and her husband, Francois D’Aoust, have hired the same four Guatemalan seasonal workers year after year. They typically clock up to 70 hours per week on the farm in Havelock, Que., and though the pay is relatively low, the workers value it.

But this year, Plante said, the farmhands are stuck in Guatemala due to travel restrictions their country has imposed to limit the spread of COVID-19.

They are among the roughly 5,000 seasonal and temporary workers that Quebec’s farmers’ union estimates will be missing on the province’s farms this year because of the pandemic, leaving Plante, D’Aoust and scores of other farmers with a tough choice: They can either reduce this year’s food production or take a chance on inexperienced but eager Quebecers thrown out of work by the pandemic.

In response to the foreign labour shortage, the provincial government on April 17 announced a $45-million program to pay an extra $100 a week above regular wages as an incentive to work on a farm. About 2,800 Quebecers have so far responded to Premier Francois Legault’s call.

But it is still unclear if there are enough unemployed Quebecers able and willing to do the work — and whether those who do will stick around if the economy picks up and their old jobs return.

Plante said bluntly that in the past, Quebecers have proven unreliable farmhands.

“That’s been our experience — and why we turned to foreign labour …. We estimate that one Guatemalan worker can be replaced by 2.5 Quebecers,” she said by phone from her farm.

The provincial program pays minimum wage, plus the $100 per week top-up and requires that applicants be available to work at least 25 hours per week. But Marcel Groleau, president of Union des producteurs agricoles, which represents about 42,000 Quebec farmers, says those kind of schedules simply won’t cut it.

“It will take farms — at a minimum — 40 hours per week, per employee, to replace the foreign labour,” he said in a recent interview.

The Canadian border remains open to seasonal farm workers, he explained, but many of them are having difficulty obtaining travel permits in their home countries.

“The pandemic made us realize how much we rely on foreign labour — but it’s been hard to attract local labour in the fields for many years now,” Groleau said.

Florence Lachapelle is hoping she’ll qualify for the extra $100 per week.

She had already agreed to work on Plante’s farm to help replace the Guatemalan farmhands before the province created the recruiting program. The 19-year-old visual arts student from Montreal met Plante and D’Aoust through family.

Lachapelle said she got involved in environmental activism at her junior college but since the pandemic doesn’t know what to do with her energy.

“I think the key to fighting climate change is through agricultural self-sufficiency and knowing how to work the earth in a respectful way,” she said in a recent interview. “I really want to learn how it works.”

And while people such as Lachapelle may be helping to fill a critical gap created by the pandemic, there are other fragile links in the agricultural supply chain exposed by the pandemic.

COVID-19 has highlighted the problems associated with industry concentration, particularly within the food-processing sector, Groleau said.

“There are fewer and fewer (processing plants), and the ones that are left are bigger and bigger,” he said. “When there is an issue at one of them, there are serious impacts for the rest of the supply chain.”

For example, the closure of a single meat packing plant in Alberta last week forced Canada to curtail beef exports to meet domestic demand. The Cargill-operated factory in Alberta has seen an outbreak linked to at least 484 cases of COVID-19s, including one death.

“We are not, at this point, anticipating shortages of beef,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said earlier in the week, “but prices might go up.”

Aside from higher prices, Plante said she and other farmers in her network expect food shortages this fall. She and her husband have already estimated they will have to cut production this year by about a third.

Pascal Theriault, a lecturer at McGill University’s farm management and technology program and vice-president of Quebec’s order of agronomists, said he hopes this crisis forces Canadians to rethink their relationship with food.

“We worked on producing food at the lowest possible cost and that’s all that counted,” he said in a recent interview. But over the years, international supply chains controlled by a handful of big players have contributed to Canadians’ alienation from the food they eat.

“I think the crisis will build awareness to eat more locally,” he said. “It’s not that we weren’t doing it before, but now we are really paying attention to it.”

Buying local could mean higher grocery bills for Canadian consumers used to seeing stores stocked with imported produce grown with cheaper labour under fewer regulations.

Canadians spend about 10 per cent of their budgets on food — one of the lowest proportions in the world, Theriault said. So there is room to pay a little more for local products — but not that much more, he said.

Lachapelle started her new job Thursday. She’ll live in a trailer on Plante’s farm and keep mostly to herself for two weeks to ensure she is not carrying the virus. Then when she starts what she expects will be gruelling work in the fields, she will respect physical distancing guidelines.

“I am very hard-working,” she said. “I’m 19, and I think I am ready, physically and mentally. I know it’s going to be a challenge. But I think it’ll be will super fun!”

Source: Quebecers answer call to work on farms, but are they up to the task?

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Quebec considers lower immigration levels to offset rise in joblessness

2020/04/17 Leave a comment

While Quebec is distinct in its approach to immigration and selects its own economic class immigrants, wonder whether this questioning of immigration levels post-pandemic will also occur at the federal level and with provincial nominations:

Quebec Premier François Legault says everything is on the table as the province looks to mitigate the damage from the coronavirus pandemic – including reducing immigration levels to counter a rise in domestic unemployment.

“It’s something we will look at. I think we have to review everything,” Mr. Legault said on Tuesday. “The number of immigrants, with the high rate of joblessness we’ll have in the coming months, we could reduce the number.”

The province has some autonomy over its immigration levels. Some 40,500 immigrants were admitted into Quebec last year, a 20-per-cent decline from the year before.

The provincial government is also preparing to pump billions of dollars more into its economy and rescue distressed companies in the months ahead, Economy Minister Pierre Fitzgibbon said in an interview this week.

“There will be more money put into the rebound of the economy than [spent for] the shutdown,” he said. “We have to be very selective and think about the strategic sectors of the economy. We can’t let a very strategic sector fall.”

Mr. Legault’s government is conducting an analysis of Quebec’s economy and businesses as it tries to work out its funding priorities. And it has also begun an analysis of its trade balance with a view to producing more of its own goods.

The province has already unveiled a $2.5-billion emergency loan program for businesses in need of immediate liquidity, and it is now pledging more as the crisis stretches out.

“The word ‘bailout’ might be strong, but some will be bailouts,” Mr. Fitzgibbon said, adding the government could also take equity in certain companies and offer some aid that is forgiven. “I’ve got companies in my mind that may need a break for a couple of months and that’s it – they’re going to be as profitable as they were before. But others, you know, will have a long path to recovery. And the path could be 12 to 18 months.”

Quebec has been slowly working towards reopening its economy after enacting some of the continent’s most severe emergency measures.

On Monday, it announced that mining, residential construction and all auto repair and maintenance services would restart under strict conditions limiting human contact. The next logical sectors to reopen would be general construction and manufacturing, Mr. Fitzgibbon said.

The province is also working with public health officials towards allowing smaller retailers to reopen, particularly those who compete against big chains that have remained in operation, such as Walmart and Costco, Mr. Legault said on Wednesday.

Business groups, unions and social groups in Quebec are weighing in on how the province can recast its economic and fiscal policy in a more permanent way. On Wednesday, several organizations including employer group Conseil du patronat du Québec, the Fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses du Québec union and environmental group Équiterre released a letter they sent to Mr. Legault spelling out measures they believe will help reboot the economy while building a resilient, low-carbon future.

Among the suggestions: Accelerate spending on $44-billion worth of planned public transit and high-speed internet projects, expand support for energy-efficient building renovation, and fund initiatives to increase consumption of locally grown food.

The groups suggest financing the measures in part by redirecting deposits currently earmarked for the province’s debt-repayment fund.

“We not only have to deal with this humanitarian and economic crisis, we also have to prepare what comes after that,” said Yves-Thomas Dorval, president of the Conseil du patronat, which represents major employers such as Rio Tinto Alcan Inc. and Royal Bank of Canada.

“It made sense to us to work with our civil-society partners to offer suggestions based on the broad social, environmental and economic consensus we have forged in Quebec over the last 10 years. Our widely shared goals are to make our society more resilient to shocks such as this pandemic, better equipped to deal with ongoing crises like climate change, more prosperous and socially strong and united.”

In trying to determine where best to direct aid for companies, Quebec is using models to look at data such as employment, salaries and business clusters where it sees strength, Mr. Fitzgibbon said. The province has in the past identified aerospace and engineering as two industries with the financial weight and profile crucial to its economy but “it’s not obvious” now which companies might be saved, the minister said.

Quebec has no shortage of companies in difficulty, but their ability to weather the storm varies wildly. Some, like Bombardier Inc., have significant debt and shrinking prospects for repaying it, while others with more tenable capital structures face cash-flow trouble as demand for their products evaporates.

Source: Quebec considers lower immigration levels to offset rise in joblessness

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Québec prévoit des délais dans le processus d’admission des immigrants

2020/04/10 Leave a comment

Not surprising. Like elsewhere:

Les organismes d’aide aux immigrants sont à pied d’œuvre pour les aider à combattre la détresse psychologique, rapporte la directrice générale d’Accueil liaison pour arrivants (ALPA), Alia Hassan-Cournol.

En entrevue avec La Presse canadienne, elle affirme aider notamment des étudiants internationaux qui craignent de ne pas pouvoir graduer et postuler au Programme de l’expérience québécoise (PEQ).

Preuve que la COVID-19 touche toutes les sphères de la société : le cabinet du ministre de l’Immigration, Simon Jolin-Barrette, reconnaît désormais qu’il y aura « une incidence sur les délais de traitement des demandes » dans le cadre de ses programmes d’immigration permanente.

« On travaille comme des fous depuis la COVID-19, s’est exclamée Mme Hassan-Cournol, qui est bien au fait de la situation. On est déjà par le fait même d’immigrer dans une situation d’instabilité. Vous venez ajouter des couches et des couches et des couches d’instabilité, de questionnements, et ça crée de l’angoisse. »

L’immigration est une responsabilité partagée entre Québec et Ottawa. Les personnes qui souhaitent postuler au PEQ, renouveler un permis d’études ou de travail, obtenir une résidence permanente ou un certificat de sélection du Québec peinent à obtenir des réponses des gouvernements, selon Mme Hassan-Cournol.

Ces personnes vivent avec « une épée de Damoclès au-dessus de la tête et surtout un gros gros point d’interrogation », insiste-t-elle.

La directrice générale de l’ALPA souligne par ailleurs que des groupes ont récemment demandé au gouvernement fédéral de prolonger automatiquement de 90 jours les visas qui viennent à échéance.

« On est dans le flou, affirme-t-elle. On ne sait pas quand on va obtenir des réponses de la part des ministères concernés quant aux délais et aux incidences de cette mise sur pause.

« C’est sûr qu’il y a un moment donné où il va falloir donner des réponses plus claires. »

L’ALPA, qui emploie des travailleurs sociaux, offre des services gratuits dans 15 langues. Débordé, l’organisme songe à gonfler ses rangs, en embauchant des psychologues spécialisés en approche clinique interculturelle.

De son côté, le directeur général de la Table de concertation des organismes au service des personnes réfugiées et immigrantes, Stephan Reichold, déplore les délais en immigration, « surtout qu’ils étaient déjà longs auparavant, mais on comprend qu’avec le télétravail, tous les processus administratifs sont au ralenti ».

Les travailleurs agricoles priorisés ?

Par ailleurs, concernant les travailleurs étrangers temporaires, Québec dit travailler pour que la priorité soit accordée aux travailleurs agricoles.

L’émission des permis de travail dans cette catégorie est la responsabilité unique du gouvernement du Canada. L’an dernier au Québec, 15 525 permis ont été délivrés à des travailleurs agricoles saisonniers.

Le 18 mars dernier, la Fédération canadienne de l’entreprise indépendante (FCEI) a exigé l’assouplissement de l’interdiction d’entrée au pays pour les travailleurs étrangers temporaires, dont le travail est nécessaire à la culture et à l’approvisionnement des fruits et légumes du Québec.

« Quant aux travailleurs étrangers temporaires, toutes les mesures sont mises en place pour traiter rapidement les demandes des travailleurs agricoles, soutient l’attachée de presse du ministre Jolin-Barrette, Élisabeth Gosselin-Bienvenue. Nous […] sommes en discussion avec le gouvernement fédéral sur le dossier. »

Source: Québec prévoit des délais dans le processus d’admission des immigrants

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End of Quebec course on religion and ethics seen as win for nationalists

2020/03/10 Leave a comment

Good overview of the various perspectives. But always felt that course was useful effort to increase understanding:

Since 2008, elementary and high school students in Quebec have taken a mandatory course aimed at cultivating respect and tolerance for people of different cultures and faiths.

But after years of relentless criticism from Quebec nationalists and committed secularists who say the ethics and religious culture course is peddling a multiculturalist view to impressionable young Quebecers, the provincial government is abolishing the course.

In a statement announcing the move, Education Minister Jean-Francois Roberge said it was a response to “abundant criticism from experts and education stakeholders.” An aide to Roberge said too much time was being taken up by a section of the course devoted to religions.

It is striking that a course aimed, in the words of the Education Department’s teaching guides, at fostering “the recognition of others and the pursuit of the common good” has proven so divisive.

But critics have long described the course as a type of mental virus, contaminating a generation of young people by making them amenable to Canadian multiculturalism and other pluralist ideas. Education Minister Jean-Francois Roberge says a new class will be taught instead by fall 2022.

Nadia El-Mabrouk, professor at Universite de Montreal’s computer science department, has been one of the most outspoken critics of the course, which she says defines citizens by their religion.

She suggested in a recent interview the course is partly responsible for the fact that, according to polls, young Quebecers are less likely to support Bill 21, the legislation adopted last June that bans some public sector workers, including teachers and police officers, from wearing religious symbols on the job.

And she’s not alone in that belief.

Jean-Francois Lisee, who lost the 2018 election as leader of the Parti Quebecois, wrote in January that it’s “difficult not to see a cause-and-effect connection” in the fact that young Quebecers who have taken the course “are the least favourable to prohibiting religious signs.”

For Sabrina Jafralie, who teaches the program at a Montreal high school, the decision to abolish the course is another sign of the growing influence of Quebec nationalists on the Coalition Avenir Quebec government.

The curriculum, she said, explains to students that Quebec is filled with people who have different driving forces. It doesn’t teach young people to be religious, she said, it simply explains why other people may be.

“But what the government is trying to do,” Jafralie said, “is in fact replace the ability to investigate and explore religiosity, with their own new religion — which is secularism.”

The course was introduced in 2008 under the Liberal government of the day to replace long-standing classes on Catholic and Protestant moral and religious instruction. Jafralie, who was one of the first teachers trained to teach the new course, says the content comes from a secular perspective.

The course exposes students to religions from around the world, and according to the teaching guides, “attention is also given to the influence of Judaism and Native spirituality on this heritage, as well as other religions that today contribute to Quebec culture.”

But for El-Mabrouk, that is precisely the problem.

The course teaches young people to “recognize, observe, to accept and to tolerate the way people practise (religion),” she said.

The issue, she continued, is that the material puts religious practices on an even footing, whether or not they run contrary to such Quebec values as the equality of men and women.

“The course is based on a vision of living together that is tied to Canadian multiculturalism … but we have changed orientation,” El-Mabrouk said, pointing to the adoption of Bill 21 as evidence.

Francis Bouchard, spokesman for the education minister, said the government recognizes that students should have an appreciation of the major religions to better understand the driving forces of the world.

But in the current program, he explained in an email, religion “took up too much space.” He said the goal of the new course isn’t to remove the religious component completely but to “rebalance” the content with “other concepts to prepare young people for Quebec society.”

Those could include themes about environmentalism, digital literacy and democratic participation, he said.

Roberge launched three days of consultations in February to collect ideas from education stakeholders for the new course’s content. The consultations sparked a scandal after one of the experts invited, McGill University law professor Daniel Weinstock, was blocked from speaking following the publication of an inaccurate newspaper column.

Richard Martineau wrote in the Journal de Montreal that the ethics and religious culture course “shoves the multiculturalist credo down the throats of children.” He then falsely stated that Weinstock — whom he called a “dyed-in-the-wool multiculturalist” — had previously advocated the symbolic circumcision of young girls.

Weinstock’s invitation was swiftly withdrawn by the minister, which led to an uproar among academics and an eventual apology from Roberge after Weinstock threatened legal action.

El-Mabrouk maintains the course should be done away with entirely. Teaching about religion in school is fine — but not in a class that is tied to ethics, she said. Religious material belongs in classes about politics, science or geography, she said, and it should be limited to older students who have the “intellectual tools” to digest the content.

“What is the best way for children to learn to live in a society, to live with one another?” she asked. “It’s having more time for sports, cultural activities, to talk together. It’s in real life situations that children learn to be together.”

But Jafralie says the content of the course reflects the realities of Quebec society, and changing it is a denial of the facts on the ground.

“There seems to be this desire to eradicate this (reality) or shape young people’s values to be more ‘Quebecois’ — and what ‘Quebecois’ is, is defined by (the government).”

Source: End of Quebec course on religion and ethics seen as win for nationalists

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Parrainage de réfugiés: une solution demandée dès maintenant

2020/03/04 Leave a comment

More Quebec immigration-related debate, this time over privately sponsored refugees:

Des associations à but non lucratif d’aide aux immigrants et aux réfugiés demandent au ministre de l’Immigration d’admettre 100 demandes supplémentaires de parrainage privé en 2020 pour compenser le cafouillage dont elles estiment avoir été victimes lors du processus de dépôt des dossiers de parrainage de réfugiés, le 20 janvier dernier.

« Pour nous et pour les ONG, pour tout le monde — même le Ministère l’a admis —, c’est clair qu’il y a eu des problèmes [le 20 janvier], et on veut savoir quelles sont les solutions. De dire que “l’an prochain, on fera mieux”, pour nous, ça ne règle pas le mal des familles aujourd’hui », déclare Me Guillaume Cliche-Rivard, président de l’Association québécoise des avocats et avocates en droit de l’immigration (AQAADI).

Dans une lettre envoyée lundi matin au ministre de l’Immigration, de la Francisation et de l’Intégration, l’AQAADI et la Table de concertation des organismes au service des personnes réfugiées et immigrantes (TCRI) demandent à Simon Jolin-Barrette de trouver une « solution juste et équitable » pour ceux qui ont été défavorisés par le processus de sélection du programme de parrainage collectif.

« Au nom de ces dizaines, voire centaines, de familles effondrées, nous vous demandons respectueusement de rouvrir le processus de réception des demandes et de permettre à ce qu’au moins cent (100) demandes additionnelles soient acceptées dans le cadre de l’exercice du programme pour 2020, et ce, suivant un processus équitable qui offre une réelle possibilité d’accès à tous », écrivent conjointement l’AQAADI et la TCRI.

Un avis juridique sur les enjeux soulevés par les irrégularités de la réception des dossiers de demande de parrainage collectif accompagne la lettre. Même si le document laisse entendre qu’il y a matière à poursuite, Me Cliche-Rivard précise que ce n’est pas le but visé.

« Notre demande, c’est vraiment de dialoguer, de discuter pour trouver une solution. On ne veut pas brandir les armes, mais on veut être pris au sérieux. C’est pour ça qu’on a été chercher un avis légal », explique Me Cliche-Rivard.

« Nous avons reçu la correspondance et nous en prenons acte », a répondu sans plus de détails l’attachée de presse du ministre Jolin-Barrette, Élisabeth Gosselin.

File d’attente de plusieurs jours

Le Programme de parrainage privé de réfugiés (PPPR) permet à des groupes privés de parrainer des réfugiés qui se trouvent à l’étranger. Des 750 dossiers admis par le programme au Québec, 100 places sont réservées aux groupes de deux à cinq parrains. Cette année, le ministre Jolin-Barrette a imposé que les demandes soient déposées le 20 janvier par l’entremise d’un messager pour qu’elles soient traitées selon le principe de « premier arrivé, premier servi ».

Des gens ont fait la queue durant plusieurs jours pour s’assurer l’une des 100 places. Or, dans les faits, comme aucune limite du nombre de demandes par messager n’avait été imposée, le processus a donné lieu à de la corruption, à de l’intimidation et à un traitement injuste des demandes. Le ministre a par la suite assuré que Québec mettrait fin au système de messagers.

Source: Parrainage de réfugiés: une solution demandée dès maintenant

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Le Québec perd la course aux étudiants étrangers

2020/03/03 Leave a comment

More pressures from within Quebec regarding more immigration, this time on the part of students and the relatively low number studying in Quebec:

Le nombre d’étudiants étrangers qui entrent au pays a doublé en quatre ans. L’Ontario en profite à plein. Le Québec ? Si peu que la province risque de perdre la course aux talents internationaux.

Selon les données d’Immigration Canada, le Canada a délivré 256 000 permis d’études à des étrangers en 2019, le double d’il y a quatre ans.

La moitié des candidats acceptés au pays étudie en Ontario. Le Québec, pour sa part, accueille seulement 12 % des titulaires de permis d’études, moins que le poids de sa population de 22,5 % dans le Canada.

Cette sous-représentation n’est pas sans conséquence, puisque l’attraction et la rétention des étudiants étrangers constituent un axe stratégique en vue de créer de la richesse et de soulager un tant soit peu la pénurie de main-d’œuvre à moyen terme. Le ministre de l’Immigration du Québec, Simon Jolin-Barrette, a décliné notre demande d’entrevue en nous invitant à communiquer plutôt avec Ottawa.

« La réalité, c’est que l’écart se creuse entre le Québec et les autres provinces dans la course aux talents », déplore Christian Bernard, économiste à Montréal International, organisme de prospection des investissements directs étrangers, qui fait aussi la promotion de Montréal comme ville étudiante internationale.

M. Bernard rappelle que le Canada est en compétition avec la plupart des pays occidentaux dans cette course aux talents.

D’après les chiffres obtenus par La Presse, 51 % des étrangers voulant étudier au Québec se sont vu refuser leur permis d’études par le gouvernement canadien en 2019, contre 38 % dans le reste du pays.

Outre la barrière de la langue française, qui réduit le nombre de demandes à son égard, le Québec est pénalisé par le refus du Canada de laisser entrer au pays un fort contingent d’étudiants francophones en provenance d’Afrique.

Selon Immigration, Réfugiés et Citoyenneté Canada (IRCC), les raisons courantes pour refuser une demande sont que « le demandeur n’a pas prouvé qu’il a assez d’argent pour subvenir à ses besoins pendant ses études ». Ou qu’« il n’a pas convaincu l’agent des visas qu’il quittera[it] le Canada à la fin de sa période d’études », explique, dans un courriel, Peter Liang, conseiller en communication d’IRCC. Pour certains pays, un examen médical est également requis. Dans tous les cas, le candidat ne doit pas avoir de dossier criminel.

« Ce qui est désolant, ajoute Christian Bernard, de Montréal International, c’est la contradiction entre, d’une part, les critères mis de l’avant pour délivrer ou non le permis d’études et, d’autre part, la volonté de tous les paliers de gouvernement qui déploient des initiatives et qui investissent des sous avec l’intention d’attirer et de retenir davantage d’étudiants internationaux au Canada et au Québec. »

Le 31 janvier, l’organisme a recommandé que le Canada réduise le taux de refus des étudiants francophones dans une étude sur la connectivité de la métropole, produite conjointement avec la Chambre de commerce du Montréal métropolitain.

Accepter deux fois plus d’étudiants dans l’espoir de pourvoir les places disponibles

Au trimestre d’automne 2019, à l’Université de Sherbrooke, 37 des 102 places réservées aux étudiants étrangers admis au bac en régime coopératif avec stages de travail rémunérés n’ont même pas pu être pourvues, les étudiants admis ayant été refusés par Immigration Canada. L’institution avait pourtant admis 189 étrangers au départ pour que soient pourvues ces 102 places.

À l’Université Laval, le taux d’inscription des étudiants internationaux préalablement admis a décliné depuis 2014. Il se situait à 67 % en 2018, dernière année pour laquelle la donnée est disponible. « En nombre absolu, le nombre a augmenté de 1100 à 1400 étudiants internationaux. Ce qui nous préoccupe, c’est qu’en pourcentage, ça baisse. On a des étudiants qui ne peuvent pas venir chez nous faute d’obtenir leur permis d’études à temps », dit Yan Cimon, vice-recteur adjoint aux affaires externes, internationales et à la santé et directeur des affaires internationales et de la francophonie.

Ces bourses d’exemption de droits de scolarité pour la francophonie du Sud, au nombre de 235 par an, ont été créées par le premier ministre Philippe Couillard lors du Sommet de la Francophonie tenu au Madagascar en 2016.

En raison de refus de permis d’études, le réseau des cégeps est incapable d’atteindre son objectif, datant de 2012, de 5000 étudiants internationaux. Les 48 cégeps publics accueillent actuellement 4300 élèves étrangers au diplôme d’études collégiales.

Dans le reste du Canada, les collèges d’enseignement professionnel formaient 151 000 étrangers en 2017, d’après un document de 2018 du Bureau canadien de l’éducation internationale. C’est 35 fois plus qu’au Québec.

« On cherche à mieux faire connaître aux agents d’immigration le réseau collégial, avance M. Tremblay, en guise de solution. On leur dit que ça se peut qu’un diplômé universitaire d’Afrique veuille suivre après coup une technique dans un cégep. Il y a un grand attrait pour les formations techniques qui ne sont pas très présentes dans le système d’éducation en Afrique. »

« Dans un contexte de pénurie de main-d’œuvre, l’intégration des étudiants internationaux au réseau collégial représente la solution à la régionalisation de l’immigration, qui est un problème au Québec depuis 40 ans », soutient le patron de la Fédération des cégeps.

Les Africains refusés par dizaines de milliers

Les données d’Immigration Canada montrent que les taux de refus sont particulièrement élevés pour les demandeurs des pays africains, principal réservoir de locuteurs francophones, après la France.

La proportion de refus atteint 90 % pour les Guinéens, 82 % pour les Camerounais, 77 % pour les Algériens et 75 % pour les Sénégalais.

Depuis cinq ans, 16 000 étudiants algériens et 5300 Sénégalais se sont ainsi vu refuser l’entrée au pays.

« Nous n’arrivons pas à nous expliquer cette situation, écrit dans un courriel René Gingras, DG du Cégep de Rivière-du-Loup. Nous espérons qu’il y aura déblocage bientôt. Nous pourrions ainsi accueillir plus d’étudiants qui parlent français, qui s’intègrent dans notre région et qui répondent aux besoins du marché du travail. »

De leur côté, les collèges et universités anglophones du reste du Canada ne rencontrent pas ce problème. Ils recrutent les étudiants de pays anglo-saxons, de pays comme le Japon, la Chine, l’Inde et la Corée du Sud, tous plus riches que les pays africains. Les taux de refus y sont beaucoup plus faibles.

« Aucune discrimination », soutient Immigration Canada

« Les demandes du monde entier sont examinées de façon uniforme et en fonction des mêmes critères. Il n’y a absolument aucune discrimination dans notre processus d’évaluation des demandes », se défend M. Liang, d’Immigration Canada.

Aucune discrimination, mais des objectifs totalement contradictoires avec ceux du Québec, déplore la Fédération des cégeps.

Le fédéral ferme la porte quand il n’est pas convaincu que l’étudiant quittera le pays à la fin des études. Or, ce même étudiant est recruté en se faisant promettre par Québec qu’une fois diplômé, il pourra rester au pays de façon permanente.

Par exemple, des missions de recrutement d’étudiants visent régulièrement le Maghreb, une région pour laquelle Immigration Canada refuse de 40 à 77 % des demandeurs.

Autant de cerveaux qui n’entrent pas au Québec.

Cinq pistes pour hausser la part du Québec

Pour attirer davantage d’étudiants étrangers, le Québec pourrait toujours emprunter un raccourci et imiter la France en proposant des formations uniquement en anglais. Le cégep de Gaspé a choisi cette voie avec son campus de Montréal, qui accueille 2000 Indiens et permet à la maison d’enseignement de faire des profits de 1 million. Des solutions moins controversées existent néanmoins.

Diminuer le taux de refus des permis d’études

« On aimerait voir plus de flexibilité dans le processus de délivrance des permis d’études, confie Yan Cimon, de l’Université Laval. Il y a énormément de pièces justificatives à fournir. C’est difficile de voir des dossiers refusés pour des formalités. »

Si le taux d’acceptation des demandes visant le Québec remontait au niveau du Canada hors Québec, la province aurait accueilli 10 000 étudiants internationaux de plus en 2019. Rapidement, la part du Québec passerait de 12 à 18 % de l’ensemble des étudiants étrangers présents au Canada.

Le fédéral ferait ainsi d’une pierre deux coups. Le pays marquerait plus de points dans la course aux cerveaux qui a cours en Occident tout en diminuant sa dépendance à l’égard de l’Inde et de la Chine, responsables à eux deux de 54 % du flux d’étudiants internationaux au pays.

Instaurer le traitement rapide des permis dans les pays francophones

En 2018, le gouvernement canadien a lancé le Volet direct pour les études (VDE) pour les demandeurs de la Chine, de l’Inde, des Philippines et du Viêtnam, puis en juillet 2019 pour le Pakistan. Le VDE a permis de réduire les délais de traitement.

« Quand vous avez des délais qui interrompent ou qui induisent un report de projets d’études, ce n’est à l’avantage ni de l’étudiant ni de l’université », dit Yan Cimon, de l’Université Laval, où les deux tiers des étudiants étrangers inscrits sont africains.

« Dans le cadre du VDE, les permis d’études des étudiants potentiels peuvent être traités plus rapidement, avance Immigration Canada, dans un courriel, car en faisant leur demande, ceux-ci montrent d’emblée qu’ils ont les ressources financières et les compétences linguistiques. » Le VDE a été élargi au Maroc et au Sénégal en septembre 2019.

Élargir l’admissibilité des diplômés du collégial au PEQ

L’accès rapide à la résidence permanente pour les candidats ayant passé par la filière étudiante contribue à la popularité du Canada comme terre d’études. Au Québec, la voie rapide se nomme le Programme de l’expérience québécoise (PEQ), en révision. Les cégeps voudraient que le gouvernement ouvre le PEQ aux diplômés d’une attestation d’études collégiales, obtenue habituellement après un an d’études, dans les secteurs en pénurie de main-d’œuvre.

Augmenter le nombre de bourses

La France a haussé les droits de scolarité facturés aux étrangers en 2018. La mère patrie cible dorénavant les pays payants comme l’Inde et la Chine. L’Afrique francophone pourrait en subir les contrecoups, elle qui fournissait historiquement 45 % des étudiants étrangers en France, selon un article du Devoir de novembre 2018. Une fenêtre s’ouvre pour le Québec en augmentant le nombre de bourses versées aux Africains. Depuis 2016, le Québec offre 500 bourses d’études aux francophones du Sud qui s’inscrivent au cégep. Encore faudrait-il que les agents d’Immigration Canada considèrent la bourse dans l’examen de la demande de permis d’études.

Entente avec la Belgique et la Suisse

La Fédération des cégeps est en demande auprès du gouvernement pour que celui-ci conclue une entente pour admettre les étudiants de la Belgique et de la Suisse aux mêmes conditions monétaires que les Français dans le réseau collégial. Les étudiants en provenance de l’Hexagone acquittent les mêmes frais que les Québécois. Une entente existe avec la Belgique depuis deux ans pour faciliter l’inscription de ses ressortissants à l’université, mais rien en ce qui concerne le cégep. Aucune entente n’existe actuellement avec la Suisse.

Source: lapresse.ca/affaires/20200…

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