In particular, as the publication "Russian Toronto" notes, the rule "first come, first served" is being abolished. Instead, a selection of applications based on the Expression of Interest system is being introduced. In effect, Quebec is moving to a universal system used by other provinces to select specialists. This step was quite expected, so there are no surprises here.
In addition, the province plans to introduce a number of additional requirements for immigrants, including requirements for knowledge of the French language at a certain level and that the applicant must share Quebec values (apparently, this is how they plan to weed out those particularly religious Muslims who place their values above the social norms accepted in Quebec).
What is truly new is the decision to return 18,000 applications that were submitted before August 2, 2018 and are currently awaiting processing. All applicants will be refunded the government fees paid, but they lose the opportunity to immigrate. This is done to reduce the processing time for newly submitted applications from 3 years to 6 months.
Here, Quebec is also not original, essentially repeating what the federal government of Canada did when transitioning to a new immigration system.