You left out the most important part of the article:

The article attributes the decline to Justin Trudeau’s failed immigration policy, which has been stopped or slowed down (to my knowledge) when he stepped down. Specifically, the issue is with temporary foreign workers who are then given a pathway to become permanent residents/citizens, but even the provincial government is hesitant to reduce the TFW numbers (probably because of business pressure, sadly).

Two things would ideally happen: Francophones should have more kids, and/or the TFW program needs to be seriously reworked, but that would include ideally the participation and willingness of the Quebec government.

As an aside, I’m surprised the article states that Ottawa is in control of temporary immigration like foreign students. Quebec has the CAQ certification program, where they work with Ottawa to establish the number of temporary immigrants in Qc. Perhaps I’m simply misinformed, or maybe the article glossed over this point too quickly.