On November 19 last year, the Quebec government unilaterally abolished the Quebec Experience Program (PEQ), replacing it with the Skilled Worker Selection Program (PSTQ).
This sudden and hasty decision has sparked a wave of legitimate outrage, as thousands of temporary workers and international students aspiring to permanent residence now find themselves in a situation of unacceptable uncertainty. Our members, our colleagues, our communities, no one can stand idly by in the face of such repercussions.
In the health care system, the debate on immigration is not an abstract issue. It is a daily and survival issue, affecting care teams, overburdened colleagues, and the system itself.
But why do unions have a duty to intervene?
A NETWORK ALREADY AT THE END OF ITS ROPE
No one in the network needs statistics to understand the situation. We live it and feel it every day.
The lack of staff has become a « chronic disease ». Overload is a daily occurrence, work stoppages due to disability are exploding, and teams must constantly do more with less, and too often with much less.
ABSENTEEISM IN NUMBERS
The report published by the Ministry of Health and Social Services, dated December 27, 2025, indicates that 26,964 employees of the network are on sick leave due to disability (CNESST or others).
This rate measures the proportion of hours paid in salary insurance and CNESST compensation.
But a disability rate of health personnel that has reached 7.8%, with an explosion of 10% in one year, its highest level since the beginning of the pandemic.
Extrapolating from an average annual salary of $68,000, this represents more than $1.8 billion in costs related to this important level of disability-related work stoppages…. 1.8 billion dollars!
This problem is a systemic problem, period.
In this context, all decisions that affect the availability and security of the workforce, including immigration policies, directly concern all workers in the network, having a direct impact on patients.
This is where the Quebec Experience Program (PEQ) becomes meaningful.
This program allows, or allowed people who work here, who pay taxes here, and who live in our communities, to obtain permanent residency after a few years of experience in Quebec.
These are not foreigners who come out of nowhere. They are often colleagues, neighbours, but also technicians, attendants, lab professionals, medical planning personnel, and pharmaceutical production staff. These are people we work with on a daily basis and on whom the network relies on to operate and support the workers already in place.
Without the PEQ, many of these people are forced to leave Quebec, while we are already struggling to recruit. It is not just a loss for them. It is a loss for our society.
Too often, we tend to talk about immigration in economic terms as an administrative or even accounting issue. How many people are entering, how many people are leaving, in which sectors, according to what criteria, etc.
If Quebec wants to maintain its ability to produce prescription drugs, support its medical technologies, take care of our seniors and children, and maintain its health care system, it needs a stable workforce, and immigration is part of that equation. Whether we like it or not.
So why are the trade unions taking a position on this issue?
Some will say that immigration is the government’s business, not theirs.
False. It is everyone’s business.
Whenever public policies have had a direct impact on labour, such as wages, working conditions, job security, the unions have not only been right to intervene, but they had and still have a duty to do so.
Economic immigration affects our workplaces, influences the stability of our teams, and consequently affects the quality of care that our network is able to offer.
Let us face it, immigration must never become a pretext to make workers more precarious, or to circumvent our collectively negotiated working conditions.
Trade union rights are for everyone, no matter where they come from.
STANDING UP FOR WORKERS. ALL WORKERS.
In an increasingly unstable world, where economic certainties and our public policies are under attack, Quebec will need much more solidarity than division.
Because the real issue, at the end of the day, is not just more or less immigration.
The question would be to choose the kind of society we want to build.
And in what state do we want to offer the health care system to those who carry it at arm’s length every day?
On this point, the labour movement has never remained silent.
And it is not today that it will start.
Photo credit: LaPresse