The Premier of Quebec François Legault has called on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to discourage the migrants who have been using Roxham Road from coming to Canada.
In a chat with newsmen in Quebec City, he said many people are claiming asylum in Canada because of a 2017 Trudeau tweet saying the country would welcome people fleeing persecution.
He said “It’s about time that Justin Trudeau makes a new tweet to say, ‘Don’t come anymore,’ because we’ve exceeded our welcoming capacity”.
The Premier added that Quebec faces a shortage of housing and its schools and hospitals cannot handle the newcomers.
According to reports, Cornwall, Ont., which is about 40 kilometres west of the Quebec boundary, began receiving many of the overflow migrants last year. “Months ago, the Liberals signed contracts with local hotels for a major Roxham Road processing centre, but local partners on the ground received zero notice, consultation or resources,” Eric Duncan, the Conservative MP for the area, said in the House of Commons.
Meanwhile, Sonia Behilil, the director of operations at a Cornwall organization that helps new arrivals, said the federal government began housing irregular asylum seekers at a local hotel last summer, and demand for her group’s services exploded.
The director said her organization, the Association canadienne-française de l’Ontario, de Stormont, Dundas et Glengarry, started to see around 20 people a day looking for help — up from just two or three.
“People had no idea where they were, some of them were thinking they were in Toronto, some people had no idea what they were supposed to do,” she said. Some thought they needed to wait in the Cornwall area until their appointment with federal immigration officials — even though that appointment might take two years.
While funding for the program ended in January, she said the organization is still supporting migrants, including by offering free winter clothing.
Reports have it that Federal government statistics show that 39,171 asylum seekers were intercepted by the RCMP on Quebec’s southern border in 2022, up from 4,095 in 2021. They accounted for more than 99 per cent of all asylum seekers who crossed the Canadian border irregularly in 2022. In total, around 60 per cent of all people claiming asylum in Canada in 2022 arrived through Quebec.
It is germane to note that Quebec’s Coalition Avenir Québec government has frequently called for Roxham Road, where the far majority of irregular crossings are made, to be closed.
In a recent statement, a spokesman for Quebec Immigration Minister Christine Fréchette said out of the 125 migrants who entered Canada at the Roxham Road crossing more recently, 102 were transferred out of the province. Fréchette had earlier revealed that all but eight of the roughly 380 asylum seekers who entered at Roxham Road some days earlier, were sent to other provinces.
Reports have it that in Ottawa, Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Quebec lieutenant, said negotiations are ongoing with other provinces to redirect migrants entering Quebec.
Speaking with newsmen, Rodriguez said “We recognize that Quebec has done more than its share, and we thank the government of Quebec for that. In fact, we are in discussion with other provinces to lighten the burden on Quebec”. He noted that some other provinces are in need of workers.
“There’s nobody who’s going to be pushed or anything. It’s done on a voluntary basis. But we recognize that Quebec’s effort here is colossal, and we’ve been there to support it since the beginning,” he said.
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