As some of you may know, Chalk Immigration has been involved in trying to assist applicants in the Programme de l’expérience québécoise (PEQ) for over a year now. We believe that the MIDI has not been respecting the law as to what is required of an applicant to qualify for a Quebec Selection Certificate. We believe that the Regulation clearly establishes that an applicant need only to submit one of the credentials designated by the MIDI (e.g. having legitimately passed one of the courses designated by the MIDI for this purpose). The MIDI has demanded that the applicants also pass an interview with an evaluator. We believe that no such recourse to an interview is permitted by the laws of Quebec.
Many applicants – a significant majority, in fact – were found not to meet the minimum language requirement at interview. These interviews were of short duration – a half hour to 45 minutes on average. The courses taken by the applicant were all evaluated by qualified French instructors – many with qualifications equal to or greater than those who evaluated the interview. Is there a problem with the way that the interviews are being conducted and evaluated by the MIDI? One must at least ask the question.
For those who want to understand the issues better, we are uploading sanitized versions of the legal arguments submitted in the group judicial review cases by IMK imk-midi-factum-final-caviardand by the Procureur général du Québec on behalf of the MIDIimk-mmoire-de-la-dfenderesse-caviard.
