Quebec's PEQ Ended — How Graduates Are Selected Now
Somewhere in a Facebook group right now, someone is telling a South African graduate to apply through Quebec’s PEQ program because it’s the fast, generous route for people who studied in the province. Quebec’s PEQ ended in late 2025, so the real question worth answering is how graduates are selected now.
What actually closed, and when
The Programme de l’expérience québécoise ended on 19 November 2025 — both the graduate stream and the temporary foreign worker stream shut on the same date. Some agencies still marketing a closed Quebec programme are charging for “PEQ applications” that lead nowhere, and outdated PEQ content is common enough online that it’s worth checking any advice against a current source before acting on it.
What replaced it
Quebec now runs one permanent skilled-worker selection route: the Programme de sélection des travailleurs qualifiés, PSTQ. Candidates register through Arrima, an online expression-of-interest portal, and the ministry draws from that pool.
Draws under PSTQ, explained
Quebec runs monthly draws, generally targeting candidates who either hold a validated job offer or have advanced French. In the first three draws of 2026, minimum invitation thresholds ran 580–620 points on Quebec’s own scoring scale, not the CRS you’d know from federal Express Entry. Don’t try to translate one into the other; they’re not comparable systems.
Why the points differ by location
Location changes the math: job offer points inside and outside Montreal are not equal. A validated job offer adds 30 points if the role is inside Montreal, and 50 points if it’s outside — a deliberate gap, since Quebec is actively steering skilled newcomers toward regions beyond the metro. A job offer isn’t mandatory for any PSTQ stream, though; candidates with strong French, a Quebec diploma, relevant Quebec work experience and a stated intent to settle outside Montreal can score competitively without one.
The pilots that closed alongside PEQ
Three permanent pilots also ended on 1 January 2026. One covered food processing workers. Another covered orderlies. A third covered AI, IT and visual effects roles. If a guide or agency is still describing any of these as open pathways, treat that as a sign the content hasn’t been updated since 2025, and look elsewhere for current information.
The line every South African needs to hear
Here’s the part that matters more than any of the mechanics above: Quebec’s selection system is built around French. Without functional French, the province is realistically closed to you, whatever your qualifications look like on paper. This is the single most common misconception among South Africans who enquire about Quebec — that English fluency and a strong CV are enough. They aren’t, and no amount of PSTQ point-chasing changes that underlying requirement.
If your French isn’t there yet and you’re not planning to invest years getting it there, Quebec is probably not your province — a legitimate conclusion to land on.
Quebec runs its own selection process entirely separate from the rest of Canada’s provincial nominee programmes, so a Certificat de sélection du Québec is worthless anywhere else, and a nomination from any other province means nothing here. Confirm the current PSTQ criteria and Arrima mechanics directly on Quebec’s immigration ministry site before acting on anything above; 2026 has already brought several changes, and more should be expected.
For the province-by-province picture beyond Quebec, our Provincial Nominee Programs guide covers how a nomination changes an application elsewhere in the country.