Immigration surge bypasses Quebec City, leaving firms struggling

financialpost.com:

In Quebec City, majestic stone fortifications have stood for hundreds of years, a monument to the days when French colonists erected them to keep out the enemy. Today, the city faces the opposite challenge — how to entice more outsiders to come in.

Businesses around the world are looking for workers, but in the capital of Canada’s second-largest province, they’re another level of desperate. The local unemployment rate hovers around 2.5 per cent, near the lowest of any North American city over 500,000 people.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has thrown open the doors wide to newcomers, boosting Canada’s immigration targets and giving the country the fastest population growth among advanced economies. They mostly stay away from the French-speaking Quebec City area, however: The region received fewer than 20,000 immigrants over the past six years. Montreal’s metropolitan area, which is about five times larger by population, has received 12 times as many immigrants.

At the Cochon Dingue, a bustling Parisian-style restaurant in the heart of the city’s business district, owner Pierre Moreau looks out at the lunchtime crowd and knows he’s operating too lean.

Before the pandemic, Moreau employed about 900 people at his Restos Plaisirs group, which operates 11 restaurants and a “prêt-à-manger” that makes boxed lunches for companies and events. Today, he has about 750.

What he really needs is another 100 staff — or a robot that can cut vegetables, Moreau says wryly. Instead, he’s making compromises, hiring people who are available to work as little as one day a week and reducing the operating hours at his restaurants to maintain the level of service.

The smaller businesses will die, and then the market will recover

“It’s exhausting,”