No question of paying for the bus or cutting social assistance to immigrants, says Quebec

Photo: Sean Kilpatrick The Canadian Press On a mission to Paris, Premier Legault loudly stated that he wanted to see half of the asylum seekers currently housed in Quebec leave quickly for the rest of Canada

Even if it wants to reduce their number by half, François Legault’s government will not reduce social assistance granted to asylum seekers and will not pay their bus fare to move to other provinces.

This is what the premier maintained Wednesday after the daily La Presse reported earlier in the morning that these two options were among the measures that had been studied by the CAQ government to encourage asylum seekers to leave Quebec for elsewhere in Canada.

“It’s not something we’re currently considering,” Legault said when intercepted by the parliamentary press before question period in the Red Room. “It’s not on the table,” added his Minister of Immigration, Jean-François Roberge.

Without specifying which ones, Roberge assured Wednesday that his government was evaluating “plenty of options” to reduce the number of people who have applied for asylum from 160,000 to 80,000 in Quebec. “What we’re doing right now is working with Ottawa to reduce [the number of] asylum seekers,” he assured.

Last week, on a mission to Paris, Premier Legault loudly stated that he wanted to see half of the asylum seekers currently housed in Quebec leave quickly for the rest of Canada. This measure must be “mandatory,” he maintained.

Since then, despite several federal notices indicating that such an operation would not respect the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Mr. Legault has continued to advocate for a mandatory transfer of these 80,000 immigrants. On Tuesday, at the Salon Rouge, he stated that it was possible to proceed “humanely.”

Other details will follow.