The Parti Québécois (PQ), whose platform includes a moratorium on permanent immigration from abroad, won Quebec’s October 5 provincial election.
Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon will head a minority government, with the PQ projected to take 59 of the National Assembly’s 127 seats, while the outgoing Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) lost every seat it held.
Under the plan St-Pierre Plamondon presented on August 29, all economic immigrants granted permanent residence would come from temporary residents already living in Quebec. The moratorium would stay in place until temporary immigration has been cut by half.
The PQ also plans to cap permanent admissions at 35,000 a year. The CAQ’s plan for 2026 targets 45,000, of which roughly 64% are economic immigrants, alongside up to 124,200 temporary workers and international students.
Quebec selects most of its economic immigrants itself under a 1991 agreement with Ottawa, so the new government will control the pipeline its pledges target.
As a minority, though, it will need other parties’ votes to pass legislation, and St-Pierre Plamondon acknowledged on election night that voters had asked the PQ to work with its rivals.
Where the QIIP Fits
The Quebec Immigrant Investor Program (QIIP) reopened on January 1, 2024 after a four-year suspension. It requires that applicants place C$1 million (approximately US$720,000) in a five-year, government-guaranteed investment through an authorized financial intermediary and make a non-refundable C$200,000 contribution.
Applicants must also hold net assets of at least C$2 million and speak French at level 7 on Quebec’s scale.
Successful applicants no longer receive permanent residence straight away. They first get a three-year work permit, and the investor and spouse must together spend 12 months in Quebec during the first two years, at least six of them by the investor personally.
That structure means QIIP investors already live in Quebec as temporary residents before they become permanent residents, the pool from which the PQ wants all economic immigrants drawn.
The party’s campaign pledges did not address the investor program or say whether its cut to temporary immigration would apply to investor work permits.
“One of Those Levers”
Patrick McCarthy, Director of the QIIP at Sherbrooke Street Capital (SSC), an authorized financial intermediary for the program, congratulated the PQ on its win and says the firm looks forward to “discussing the future of the QIIP” with the new immigration minister.
The program has contributed to the economy for decades, McCarthy notes, including under previous PQ governments. Its funding, he tells IMI, has allowed small and medium-sized businesses across the province “to expand manufacturing facilities, increase their export capabilities and employ more Quebeckers.”
He expects the new government to see it that way too. The PQ is “pro-business and economy-first,” McCarthy says, and a program “which has the potential to contribute massively to the economy, while not costing taxpayers anything, could be one of those levers.”
Quebec’s right to run a passive investor program is also “unique in Canada,” he points out. Ottawa closed its federal investor program in 2014, and the other provinces’ business streams require that applicants run a business, which McCarthy believes makes the QIIP “something this Government will want to protect and develop further.”
