Demonstrations took place Monday morning in Quebec’s two biggest cities to protest the end of the Quebec experience program (PEQ).
The rally in Montreal was held in front of Immigration Minister Jean-François Roberge’s office. Another one was held simultaneously in front of the National Assembly in Quebec City.
“We’re not just numbers; we’re families, children, people,” said Nadir Belaid, a student from Algeria who recently graduated. “We would like to be able to stay and develop not just Quebec, but a whole country of Canada. So for sure, we would like the PEQ to be reopened and have a clause that allow the people that are already here to stay.”
Until now, PEQ was one of the main routes to permanent residence for temporary workers and foreign students who had already settled in Quebec.
The program offered a fast-track to permanent residency, with admissions continuous and unlimited.
But the Legault government suspended it without notice in June, citing a need to better meet its immigration targets. The program is slated to be terminated on Wednesday.
Protesters on Monday demanded, at a minimum, a grandfather clause for people already living in Quebec.
Belaid, who graduated in December 2024 and is on a work permit expiring in 2028, says the end of the PEQ puts his future projects in jeopardy.
“And we definitely feel betrayed by the government of Quebec as they had this program which allowed not just me, but hundreds of thousands of other students, foreign workers to obtain permanent residency and have a chance to stay in Quebec and all,” he said. “But now it’s over and we feel extremely betrayed by what happened, and we’re here today to make the government hear how we feel about the situation.”
Also impacted is Andrea Hero, a Brazilian student who came to Quebec in 2022 with her husband. They have open work permits.
“We have a good jobs and jobs that is high demand in Quebec,” Hero said. “So I work in a hostel, my husband is a electrical technician. So we have a good professional here. And I’m doing my equivalence to become a nurse here, I’m a nurse in my country.”
With the end of the PEQ, the Skilled Worker Selection Program (PTSQ) is now the only pathway to permanent residence in Quebec. It functions as a pool of candidates, from which the provincial government can select the number and profile of individuals whom they want to invite to apply for permanent selection in the province, according to its needs.
But Hero says she is not qualified.
“So we don’t know what we can do now,” she said. “It’s so disgusting. Change, moving to another city or another province is difficult because we have two kids and a house that we bought. And so it’s for now, yeah, we really, we don’t know what it can do.”
–With files from Radia Tidafi, OMNI News