Well, that didn’t take very long.
Just about 24 hours after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that U.S. President Donald Trump would be delaying his 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian imports by at least 30 days, and right after Trudeau proclaimed Canadians are “more united than ever,” Quebec Premier Francois Legault insisted there was no way his province would accept a pipeline being built across its land.
That was fast.
The show of solidarity between Canada’s premiers to reduce barriers to interprovincial trade in the face US president Donald Trump’s tariff threats lasted less than eight hours.
Speaking to reporters following The Donald’s gesture to delay what amount to crippling economic sanctions on Canada’s export industries, Quebec Premier François Legault said his province was willing to do anything to prevent the imposition of tariffs in the future.
Quebec’s immigration minister says newcomers to the province need to embrace the “common culture,” as the government looks to put Quebec identity back at the forefront of the political agenda.
The Quebec government will table a new bill Thursday on the integration of immigrants, which will require newcomers to adhere to Quebec values like gender equality and secularism.
“We will be pretty clear. We are a nation, we have a culture, we have democratic values,” Immigration Minister Jean-François Roberge told reporters in Quebec City as the provincial legislature resumed Tuesday following the holiday break. “And people coming here must accept that.”
A new report from Quebec’s statistics institute says many of the province’s regions grew at a record or near-record pace between 2023 and 2024, due in large part to immigration, while deaths outnumbered births for the first time.
Montreal led the way, adding more than 91,000 people between July 2023 and July 2024 for a 4.2-per-cent growth rate—one of the highest ever recorded in any region.
“Montreal’s growth alone accounts for 44 percent of the total growth recorded in Quebec,” the Institut de la statistique du Québec said Thursday in a news release. Quebec City set a new record at 2.4 percent growth, while the city of Laval and the Outaouais and Mauricie regions followed closely behind.
Parti Quebecois is on the rise again in Quebec, leading in most polls by 12 to 15 points.
This is mostly due to the unpopularity of the current Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ) government under Premier Francois Legault, plus the voting public’s general distaste for incumbents, rather than any strong desire among Quebecers for their province’s independence from Canada.
MTL Shake, a family dance party planned for Sunday afternoon in Rosemont, was cancelled on Saturday after La Presse reported discounted tickets were being sold for Black, Indigenous and people of colour.
Ticket price for a white adult had been set at $25.83, compared with $15.18 for BIPOC adults. Lawyer Julius Grey, an expert in human rights law, called the initiative an example of “flagrant discrimination,” the newspaper reported.
Quebec Premier François Legault met up with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, U.S. president-elect Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk while visiting Paris this weekend.
On Saturday, Legault posted a photo of himself shaking hands with Trump on social network X. “With U.S. President-elect Donald Trump to discuss Canadian border control and tariffs on Canadian products,” he wrote.
Later in the evening, he posted another photo of himself clasping elbows with Zelenskyy, saying Ukraine has Quebec’s support and solidarity. “Quebec is with Ukraine and will be until the war is over,” he said, adding that the province has welcomed thousands of Ukrainian refugees.
Legault also said he met with Musk, Tesla’s CEO, “to discuss, among other things, international trade and electric vehicles.”
MONTREAL—Quebec Education Minister Bernard Drainville says his department will investigate complaints involving 17 schools across the province where it is alleged that state secularism is not being respected.
“Complaints and reports have been brought to the attention of the (Education Department) regarding issues related to non-compliance with secular obligations,” the Education Department said in a statement. “Many citizens responded to the call to inform the government of any situation where behaviour contrary to the values of Quebec society is observed.”
With the old threat of Quebec separatism rearing its head with the Parti Quebecois on the rise in the polls and its leader promising a referendum on Quebec sovereignty if he’s elected, thoughtful commentators have been fretting of late about the possibility of a third referendum(opens in a new tab).
I’ve got good news for them: it’s not going to happen.
That’s not to say that separatism is dead. It ain’t. What is worth noting, though, is that it’s still stuck in the 33% range(opens in a new tab) where it’s been for decades.
Premier François Legault says the federal government should force asylum seekers arriving in Quebec to move to other provinces, including people who have already settled in the province.
Legault said during a trip to Paris on Wednesday that he wants half of the asylum seekers currently in Quebec to be transferred elsewhere in the country.
The premier says it doesn’t make sense that Quebec receives about 45 percent of would-be refugees in Canada, despite accounting for only 22 percent of the population.
Among the adopted motions, one proposes that children, starting as early as kindergarten, address others with more formal language by using the French pronoun “vous” instead of “tu.”
In Spanish, “tu” is a possessive adjective meaning “your” (singular informal). Interesting, eh?
Quebecers who want to arrange a medically assisted death before their condition leaves them unable to grant consent can do so as of next month, the province announced Saturday as it unveiled details of a plan to grant such requests without waiting for Ottawa to update the country’s criminal code.
Quebec’s school year started on a familiar note: thousands of teaching spots were unfilled, and the provincial government had to defend itself for its failure to solve the problem.
But as politicians continue to point to immigration — a common justification for the province’s ills — as the main culprit, education experts say newcomers are not the underlying cause of the widespread teacher shortages.
OTTAWA — With only two years experience in politics, Quebec Immigration Minister Christine Fréchette may be a political upstart, but she seems to be the spearhead of Canada’s immigration policy.
And now, with a mini cabinet shuffle likely on Thursday, François Legault could entrust her with yet another major file: the economy.
Since Fréchette took over as immigration minister in 2022, she has not been the most vocal or flamboyant minister but she has been trusted with one of her boss’s most cherished priorities. And again and again, Canada has followed Fréchette’s lead on immigration.
