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Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship

During Question Period on immigration, the Bloc Québécois raised problems faced by Quebec businesses trying to renew work permits for temporary foreign workers. Maxime Blanchette-Joncas said a lack of coordination between two government departments causes permits to be cancelled because one department’s processing takes longer than the deadline the other imposes, and asked the government to extend deadlines and reopen mistakenly closed files for free. Joël Lightbound, responding for the Liberals, said the government recognizes Quebec’s reliance on temporary foreign workers and pointed to measures extending work permits by a year, with spouses also eligible, and said processing times for these requests had been extended to 90 days.Written by AI from the debate. Updated .

Official text

2 statements

Joël Lightbound

Liberal
“Quebec relies on temporary foreign workers. We are extending their work permits by one year. Starting today, their spouses and partners can also get this extension.”
Official Hansard

Madam Speaker, our government recognizes that Quebec relies heavily on temporary foreign workers. I know that is the case in our region, the Quebec City region, and that is certainly the case in several regions throughout Quebec. We have implemented a targeted measure that extends temporary foreign worker permits by one year. I am also very pleased to announce that, as of today, this public policy from the Minister of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship will also apply to the spouses and partners of work permit holders. This is good news for many temporary foreign workers in Quebec. We continue to work with Quebec on these labour issues.

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Joël Lightbound

Liberal
“Yes. We gave these requests 90 days to be processed for that exact reason.”
Official Hansard

Madam Speaker, the answer is yes. Incidentally, we extended the processing time for these requests to 90 days precisely for the reason he just mentioned.

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