"How did you manage to move to Canada?" We get asked that a lot. There isn't one answer. There are three, and they look nothing alike.
The first door is studying. You come to Quebec for a degree, and you figure the degree will be enough. It isn't automatic. The graduates stream of the Quebec Experience Program, or PEQ, allowed you to apply for a Quebec Selection Certificate (CSQ), a step before permanent residence, as soon as you graduated. But not every Quebec degree qualified: the type of program, its length, the institution, it all mattered, and you had to check whether your program was eligible before you even enrolled, not after. A lot of people found out too late. Between the degree and permanent residence, there was also a bridge: the post-graduation work permit, or PGWP, which let you work legally while your PEQ file moved forward, with no gap in status.
I say "allowed," in the past tense, because in November Quebec abolished the PEQ. CBC reports on the anger of the people who were counting on it. A lab technician quoted in the article, originally from Algeria, sums it up in one sentence aimed at the government: "You broke a promise." Another, a spokesperson for an advocacy group, describes feeling "totally betrayed and abandoned." Since then, the only direct economic pathway into Quebec runs through another, narrower program.
The second door is work: landing a job from outside the country. Here, everything depends on the kind of work permit you get, and the difference between the two kinds changes the whole experience. A closed permit, officially called "employer-specific," ties you to one particular employer: if you want to switch, you have to go through the paperwork all over again. An open permit doesn't tie you to anyone: you work where you want, for whoever you want. In 2023, 80% of the work permits IRCC issued were open, and 20% were employer-specific. Of those employer-specific permits, 84% came under the International Mobility Program and 16% under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program. Employers of closed-permit holders are subject to a compliance regime designed to prevent abuse, and there's even a special open permit for workers who experience abuse from their employer, precisely so they can leave without losing everything.
The third door is immigrating directly, without going through an employer or a local degree. There are two routes, depending on whether you're aiming for Quebec or the rest of the country: the Skilled Worker Selection Program (PSTQ) on the Quebec side, or Express Entry on the federal side. Either way, you get permanent residence without already having a job lined up, and you can look for work once you arrive. But nothing comes for free: you have to prove you can stay afloat financially. For the PSTQ, that takes the form of a Financial Self-Sufficiency Contract, which commits you to showing you can support yourself for the three months after you get your status, according to the Quebec government's requirements. The program sorts candidates by their main occupation, identified by a National Occupational Classification (NOC) code, and splits applications across four streams, from highly specialized skills all the way to exceptional talent. On the Express Entry side, first-hand accounts from applicants mostly talk about the waiting, and the pile of documents to gather before you can submit anything at all.
These doors don't stay put. Quebec's employers' lobby denounced the PEQ moratorium and the planned caps on PSTQ invitations, arguing that the economic fallout could be worse than that of U.S. tariffs, at a time when companies are already turning down contracts for lack of workers. What held for an application filed one year won't necessarily hold for one filed the next.
In our case, we'd filed both, a PSTQ and an Express Entry application, in parallel, without knowing which one would cross the finish line first. Express Entry was the one that came through: the email confirming permanent residence arrived just after we'd received our CSQ.
I wrote a separate article dedicated to Express Entry.
Further reading
- PEQ pour les étudiants étrangers au Québec : timing et stratégie 2026 (in French)
- Why the controversy over Quebec ending PEQ program isn't going away anytime soon – CBC News
- CIMM – Open and employer-specific work permits – Canada.ca
- Requirements under the Skilled Worker Selection Program – Gouvernement du Québec
- Entrée Express : témoignage de 2 candidates – pvtistes.net (in French)
- Le CPQ dénonce les nouvelles annonces en immigration (in French)
