Legault was reportedly warned that forcibly moving asylum seekers violates the Charter

Photo: Ludovic Marin Agence France-Presse Asked to react, François Legault's press attaché stated that “no one has any memory of such a conversation in the Prime Minister's team”.

Michel Saba – The Canadian Press in Villers-Cotterêts

Published at 3:52 p.m.

• Quebec

François Legault had been informed in the spring that the idea of ​​forcibly moving 80,000 asylum seekers did not respect constitutional obligations, Ottawa reports. The Quebec premier’s office retorts that it has no recollection of such a conversation.

“We cannot legally force a person to move to another province. […] The person must go of their own free will.” “That has always been made very clear with Quebec,” said a federal government source who spoke on condition of anonymity on Friday.

And Ottawa says it communicated this to Quebec at the beginning of the summer, before the June meeting between Mr. Legault and the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, which aimed to address immigration issues, said the same source.

Read also

• Legault does not want to judge the legality of the mandatory transfer of asylum seekers
• Legault wants a “mandatory” program for distributing asylum seekers
• On a visit to Paris, Legault passes the buck to the federal government on immigration

M. Legault, who is on the fourth day of his visit to France, has been arguing since Wednesday that half of the asylum seekers already established in Quebec should be forcibly moved to other provinces, but he refuses to say how he would go about it.

“Out of the question”

At one point in the discussions, the Legault government reportedly asked itself: “Can't we just force them ? Why do we have to accept them ?” the source said.

“We didn't think he would go so far as to say that, because we thought we had done the work needed to make them understand that ultimately it's not possible,” they explained in Ottawa.

200% Deposit Bonus up to €3,000 180% First Deposit Bonus up to $20,000

Asked to react, Mr. Legault's press secretary, Ewan Sauves, stated that “no one remembers such a conversation in the Prime Minister's team.”

“Mr. Trudeau's government prefers to distract from the real problem: it has no solution to reduce the number of asylum seekers in Quebec,” he added.

Already, in a document dating from July, Ottawa stated in black and white that “the resettlement of asylum seekers” must be done on a “voluntary basis,” because “there is no no legislative power to force [their] transfer […] to another province.”

To be clear, the Canadian Press government source maintains that it is “out of the question” to force the compulsory movement of asylum seekers by invoking the notwithstanding clause of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

As for the “waiting zones” for asylum seekers as is done in France, mentioned by Mr. Legault on Tuesday, the source stated that the idea “of creating a certain format of centre or camp” has “never come up in any political discussion meeting with him.”

Questions of numbers and areas of jurisdiction

Generally speaking, Ottawa wants the Legault government to put its energies into resolving immigration problems in the areas it controls, for example in the area of ​​study permits. which are delivered.

According to data provided by the federal government, four Quebec institutions are in the top 10 in Canada where, between January and August, the most people returned with student visas and then applied for asylum.

These are the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi (305), Ellis College, Trois-Rivières campus (255), Université Laval (225) and the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (215).

According to a table prepared by the federal government, there are 96,021 asylum seekers currently in Quebec, and not approximately 160,000 as the Legault government claims.

On this subject, the team of the Premier of Quebec indicated that his figure corresponds to the number of asylum applications processed in Quebec over the last three years, according to Statistics Canada data.

The will of the other provinces

Ottawa also wants Mr. Legault to work to “raise awareness” among the premiers of the other provinces to welcome more asylum seekers. “We are doing our part […], but we need to have a collaborative approach,” the source said.

She even believes that the Legault government is slowing down immigration efforts with its statements, because otherwise we could see “a clear improvement” in the number of asylum seekers.

However, Mr. Legault's entourage criticizes Ottawa for having an approach that relies solely “on the will of the provinces and asylum seekers,” which has in fact produced “no results.”

The Premier of Quebec is in France to take part in the Francophonie Summit, but he began his visit with a three-day economic mission that led him to meet with many business leaders and politicians, including French Prime Minister Michel Barnier and his predecessor Gabriel Attal. However, his stay was largely colored by his statements on the subject of immigration.