Legault defends saying non-French speaking immigration could threaten Quebec cohesion

Coalition Avenir Qubec Leader Franois Legault is defending comments he made Sunday when he said that non-French speaking immigration, if not limited in number, couldpose a threat to national cohesion in the province.

"Immigration is an asset for Quebecbut we have a limited capacity to integrate French, and that's all I'm saying," he said during a campaign stop in Saint-Lazare, Que., on Monday.

"We also have a responsibility to defend the French language, to protect it. That does not mean that immigration is not important butwe have a challenge to take in a number of immigrants that we are able to integrate to protect the French language in the long term."

Speaking to a few hundredsupporters and several candidates inDrummondville, Que. on Sunday,Legaultstressed the importance of protectingthe cohesion of theQuebec nation, which he said is centred around the French language.

"The premier of Quebec, the only head of state in North America who represents a majority of Francophones, has a duty to stop the decline of French in Quebec," he said Sunday.

Asked afterwardwho represented that threat, Legault pointed toopposition parties like the Liberals and Qubec Solidaire who are campaigning on increasing immigration levels if they are elected.

"It's like math. If we want to stop the decline for a while, we have to better integrate newcomers to French," Legault said, whose own party wants to cap immigration at 50,000 per year, with 80 per cent who already speak French.

The Parti Qubcois (PQ) would lower those thresholds to 35,000, while the Quebec Liberal Party (PLQ) would keep them at 70,000 and Qubec Solidaire (QS) would cap them at80,000.

Just last week, Legaultstirred controversy with comments thatlinked immigration to the province with extremism and violence before apologizing. His latest comments were condemned by his opponents.

"The Ukrainians fleeing the bombs, the Italians, the Greeks, the Mexicans, the Portuguese, the Vietnamese,[...]is this a threat to our nation?" Liberal Leader Dominique Anglade responded Sunday.

On Monday, Anglade accusedLegault of making "petty" comments on the campaign trail ones she saidhurt her personally as a child of immigrant parents.

"It's your speech, Franois Legault, that threatens social cohesion."

QSco-spokesperson Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois called Sunday's comments on immigration "clumsy" and "hurtful."

"I'm tired of Franois Legault always talking about immigration as a problem, as a threat, as something that weakens us as a nation," he said.

The comments made their way to the federal level on Monday, when Canadian Heritage Minister and Quebec lieutenant Pablo Rodriguez was asked for his reaction.

Rodriguez saidit's time to stop dividing Quebecers into "us and them."

"The second a person comes to Quebec, devotes his life to Quebec, raises his kids inQuebec, that person is a Quebecer," he saidoutside a federal Liberal caucus meeting in St. Andrews, N.B.

The minister told reporters in fluent Frenchthat he wonders whether Legault would have considered him and his parents threats because they spoke no French when they immigrated to Quebec from Argentina.

Rodriguez asked at what point a person stops being an immigrant and becomes a Quebecer.