A construction entrepreneur from a modest family will slash his profits to build 400 units worth $85 million for temporary foreign workers (TFWs) across Quebec to give back.
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“It came to get me because my great-grandparents arrived from Italy and Lithuania”, confides with emotion to the Journal Normand Cesare, president of Management and Construction Blueprint, founded six years ago.
“My mom raised six guys on her own. We learned that young. Christmas baskets, we had some. Today, we give back,” continues the committed entrepreneur from Marieville, in Montérégie.
In several regions of Quebec
With his partner, Patrice Bastien, he is preparing to build hundreds of units for temporary foreign workers (TFW) in Quebec.
Shawinigan (120), La Sarre and Notre-Dame-du-Nord (48 each), Buckland (96) and in the MRC of Montmagny (72) are among the communities where the homes will be built.
“It will be new buildings, clean, energy efficient, fully furnished. It goes as far as utensils and placemats, ”says Patrice Bastien.
“We are working on two shortages at the same time: labor and housing,” sums up the entrepreneur active in the voluntary sector in his area.
100,000 homes missing
In Quebec, a good 100,000 housing units are still missing, according to the Association of Construction and Housing Professionals of Quebec (APCHQ).
Congratulating the newly re-elected Legault government, its CEO, Maxime Rodrigue, did not fail to remind him of the urgency “to deploy a serious policy”.
” We do not have a choice. We heard from employers who were buying single-family homes to convert them into units for temporary foreign workers,” illustrated its director of the economic department, Paul Cardinal.
For Robert Stead, president of the Association Aide à l’immigration Canada, a non-profit organization, who came up with the idea of these units, we have to move.
“We have 91 people who have a permit, but who cannot land for lack of accommodation,” laments the man at the head of around thirty employees.
No ghetto
Au JournalRobert Stead insists: there is no question for him of “creating ghettos”, so he refuses to bring together people from the same country.
” We blend. For example, four Colombians, four Tunisians, four Chinese, four Thais and four Quebecers to help them integrate more easily,” he explains.
“We don’t want to create ghettos,” he concludes.
In total, the Immigration Assistance Canada Association aims to build more than 2,500 additional housing units over the next year.