Immigration to Quebec/Emigration from Quebec: Who’s arriving, who’s leaving, and why?

One objective of this study is to describe the flows as well as the characteristics of immigrants choosing to migrate to Québec coming from the other provinces and to compare those flows and characteristics to those of immigrants leaving Québec to go to another province. In addition, the sensitivity of immigrants to changing labour market conditions in terms of their decision to migrate to another province is examined. The bulk of the analysis is performed using the 1981-2006 Canadian censuses. The results show that more immigrants leave Québec to go to another province from one census survey year to the next than there are immigrants migrating to Québec from the other provinces. This is particularly true for the better educated individuals. Ontario has been more successful than Québec in attracting and retaining its immigrants. One reason for this is that the Ontario labour market seems to do a much better job of integrating immigrants—especially recent ones—compared to Québec, as shown by the significant gap in the unemployment rates of immigrants between the two provinces. Finally, there is evidence that a stronger labour market plays a role in retaining immigrants in Québec but that it does not seem to be as successful in attracting immigrants residing in other provinces.