Toula Drimonis: Immigration is bad for Quebec's fertility rate? Really?

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Parti Québécois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon recently stated that “astronomical” immigration can harm Quebec’s birthrate. According to him, housing and accessibility of services, particularly daycare spaces, are determining factors affecting the decision to have children. “The two are related,” he said.

Leaving aside the tenuous connection between “mass” immigration and the housing crisis, which experts say is misleading or largely exaggerated, do these factors really affect birthrates?

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In 2023, Quebec recorded one of the lowest fertility rates in its history. From 1.48 children per woman in 2022, the rate dropped to 1.38, staying just above the historic low of 1.36 in 1987. Can this drop be linked to recent events when it’s part of a general downward trend observed for decades?

Low-fertility woes are not unique to Quebec. Canada registered a dramatic drop in fertility rates starting in 1960 when the contraceptive pill came along. Another major drop followed in 1969 when contraception and abortion were decriminalized. The downward trend has continued ever since, as women have more control over their family planning and financial prospects. While economic challenges could delay or prevent some from having children, considerations to have children or not (and how many) go way beyond financial factors.

Since low birthrates have far-reaching economic and social consequences for a country — including economic stagnation or decline — there’s nothing inherently alarming about societies with declining birthrates and an aging population favouring pro-natalist policies.

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But while programs like paid parental leave, child tax credits, childcare deductions or access to IVF treatments may encourage a few more people to have children and provide short-term fertility boosts — like Australia’s “baby bonus” did — they fail to make a long-term dent. Evidence of the effect of parental leave on fertility has also been highly mixed.

Does Quebec’s affordable daycare make a difference? A 2018 study examining the relationship between fertility rates and labour force participation among women in Ontario and Quebec showed that Quebec’s fertility rate was 1.59 children, while Ontario’s was 1.46. While Quebec’s childcare policies seem to have made a positive impact on the number of women in the workforce (81 per cent in Quebec versus 75 per cent in Ontario) and may have helped bump the birthrate upward a bit, that number is still far lower than the replacement level fertility rate of 2.1.

Quebec still needs immigration. Without it, the natural increase of our population (births minus deaths) is currently close to zero.

Unsurprisingly, a major loss of income for mothers has been identified as Canada’s key driver of low fertility. Canadian women now experience on average a nearly 40-per-cent drop in earnings in the first five years after giving birth, which experts say is a leading factor in record-low birthrates. The difference is stark: a decrease of nearly 40 per cent for women and just 0.5 per cent for men. Children also permanently reduce women’s income significantly more than men.

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Today’s pro-natalist movements make me uneasy because they’re often associated with right-wing, anti-immigration and anti-feminist politics. Vice-president elect J.D. Vance’s declaration that the votes of people with children should count for more than those of non-parents amounts to advocating for two-tiered citizenship and constitutes an affront to democracy. In Europe, the political push to drive up birthrates has been led by right-wing leaders Viktor Orbán of Hungary and Giorgia Meloni of Italy.

Conservative calls to have more babies are often linked to fears that Western societies are being “demographically replaced” by immigrants, rhetoric familiar to Quebecers. It wasn’t long after Plamondon’s statement before I saw comments on X alluding to how Quebec could ensure the “right” kind of people are encouraged to have babies.

With low birthrates and an aging population, Quebec is poorly positioned to deal with demographic challenges. Could removing hindrances permit a few more Quebecers who want children to have them? Maybe.

Will that substantially decrease Quebec’s need for immigration? Absolutely not.

Toula Drimonis is a Montreal journalist and the author of We, the Others: Allophones, Immigrants, and Belonging in Canada.

toulastake@gmail.com

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