PSTQ’s scoring system<\/a>.<\/p>\nIn April, her validated job offer will expire, which will set her back another 30 points. Renewals take months and are initiated by the employer at a fee. <\/p>\n
“For those who are waiting like me, I can tell you that there is no predictability and we really feel like they’re playing with our lives like in the lottery,” she said, referring to the minister of immigration’s assertion that the PSTQ is not that \u2014 a lottery.<\/p>\n
Strict criteria<\/p>\n
In November, Immigration Minister Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Roberge eliminated the Programme de l’exp\u00e9rience qu\u00e9b\u00e9coise (PEQ) and made the newer and stricter PSTQ the only pathway for economic migrants with their eyes on Quebec.<\/p>\n
The PSTQ essentially exists so that Quebec can prioritize the best candidates in key sectors \u2014 education, health care, child care and manufacturing \u2014 and drive more immigration to the regions, Roberge says. The PEQ, on the other hand, operated on a first-come, first-served basis and most candidates would end up in Montreal.<\/p>\n
The PSTQ is divided into four streams, each with its own criteria to respect: specialized workers, those with intermediate competence and manual skills, regulated professions, and exceptional talent. Applicants who wish to live in Quebec permanently have to submit a declaration of interest through the Arrima platform, and then they’re given a score. <\/p>\n
If an applicant receives an invitation, they have 30 days to accept it followed by 60 days to apply for permanent selection, a process that grants a Quebec Selection Certificate (CSQ).<\/p>\n
Only once the Immigration Ministry issues that certificate can the applicant finally apply for permanent residence through the federal government.<\/p>\n
Immigration lawyer Maxime Lapointe calls the program “granular,” adding that valuable people can be easily overlooked due to the PSTQ’s strict selection criteria.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe main problem is, you stop earning points after 45 years old, so maybe Quebec [gets] penalized because they don\u2019t take a very good nurse that\u2019s 47 years old, we don\u2019t know,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He said a better model would be to make the PSTQ complementary to the PEQ. He would also like to see an exemption be put in place for those who arrived in Quebec before the PEQ was abolished and who would have been eligible under the program.<\/p>\n
The first CSQs through the PSTQ were delivered in January, the Immigration Ministry said in a statement to CBC News, but it would not confirm how many were issued. <\/p>\n
“As the volumes are still small at the moment, we cannot present any data in order to preserve the confidentiality of personal information,” the statement reads.<\/p>\n
11th-hour heartbreak<\/p>\n
When Bollet Michel was living in Europe, she said the recruiters made it clear to her that they were looking for people with long-term projections in Quebec and that her chances of securing permanent residence through the PEQ were very high. <\/p>\n
So when, in 2025, after two years of working in Montreal, she finally became eligible to apply, she was dismayed to see the program had been suspended just hours before on that summer’s day in June. <\/p>\n
“[The recruiters] forgot to tell us that the politics could change overnight and that that truth could be completely different in two years,” she said. To her, the new approach holds “many contradictions.”<\/p>\n
Sant\u00e9 Qu\u00e9bec continues to run recruitment campaigns abroad for “professions in high demand,” a spokesperson, Marianne Paquette, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
“Candidates may be informed of existing immigration programs at the time of recruitment,” she said, adding that those “are subject to programs and criteria established by governments and may change over time.” <\/p>\n
After Bollet Michel’s rude awakening to the PEQ’s suspension, she got involved with the immigrant advocacy group Le Qu\u00e9bec c’est nous aussi, eventually becoming its spokesperson.<\/p>\n
Fighting for the so-called “PEQ orphans” through the group has been a great source of motivation to push forward, she said, as there’s little she can do for her score at this point. She’s tied to her employer in Montreal through a closed work permit and simply needs to keep waiting in the hopes that one day, her profile will match who Quebec is looking for.<\/p>\n
But she can’t stay in that idle state forever. <\/p>\n
“If one day we need to leave Montreal, it’ll be to go to a different province because Quebec has wronged us too much.”<\/p>\n
She said New Brunswick’s Health Ministry has already given her phone a ring.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Florence Bollet Michel’s score has sat unchanged for months in the database of people looking to settle permanently…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":515796,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194292],"tags":[49,48,2338],"class_list":["post-515795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-montreal","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-montreal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=515795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/515796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1772707508_63_default.jpg\")
<\/p>\n