Quebec poised to elect separatists to power for first time more than decade

Voters in Quebec are going to the polls in provincial elections which will probably result in victory for a party that has promised to hold a referendum on independence from Canada within the next two years.If polls are correct, the Parti Québécois (PQ) will form the government of the province of roughly nine million, the first time that the separatist movement will have gained power in the French-speaking region for more than a decade.A PQ victory in Monday’s election would also be likely to trigger a return to pitched battles over questions of language and identity between Quebec and the federal government.Long considered a declining force in Quebec politics, the PQ owes its resurgence to party leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon. The 49-year-old Oxford-educated lawyer and polyglot has positioned himself as a TikToking gen-X rebuttal to François Legault, Quebec’s long-serving Premier until he resigned early this year.Paul St-Pierre Plamondon is greeted by his children and partner ahead of a leaders debate in Montreal in September. Photograph: Canadian Press/ShutterstockAnalysts say that St-Pierre Plamondon’s electoral success is not because he is a separatist – the majority of voters do not support an independent Quebec – but because of his rightwing take on red-meat identity issues.He has blamed immigrants for Quebec’s overflowing schools, increased crime and skyrocketing housing prices, while promising to slash immigration levels and ban “conspicuous” religious symbols from the bodies of teachers and their students. He has derided his critics from the leftist Quebec-solidaire" class="entity-link entity-organization" data-entity-id="213589" data-entity-type="organization">Quebec Solidaire party as “woke”, and has taken to repeating the talking points of hard-right columnists.Many in the province agree with St-Pierre Plamondon’s rhetoric, even though it strays from PQ’s social democratic roots, according to radio host Patrick Lagacé. “Most Quebecers traditionally see themselves as being on the left. Increasingly, though, they are on the right when it comes to social issues like systemic racism and accommodation of religious behaviour. They’ve hardened on these issues, and don’t see themselves in the left’s recent fixation on identity issues,” Lagacé said.The biggest drag on St-Pierre Plamondon’s popularity has been his oft-repeated promise to hold a referendum during the first mandate of a PQ government. An overwhelming majority of Quebecers don’t want such a thing any time soon – particularly with Canada locked in a trade war with the US. The province mostly voted for Liberal leader Mark Carney over the separatist Bloc Québécois in last year’s federal election, expressly because of Carney’s “elbows up” posturing against the Trump administration.But for the PQ, Donald Trump was at first a curse, then a gift. Early in the campaign, St-Pierre Plamondon said he wouldn’t hold a referendum as long as Trump was in power, defusing the issue and allowing St-Pierre Plamondon to concentrate on attacking immigration and immigrants.The party has also benefited from a four-way race for the right-leaning nationalist vote beyond the reliably Liberal fiefdom of Montreal – particularly around Quebec city, where the upstart Parti Conservateur du Québec has made significant inroads. “The Parti Québécois is benefiting from a massive vote split because those who don’t like the PQ don’t agree on who to vote for,” said poll analyst Philippe Fournier.Though the PQ will probably form the next provincial government, it remains unclear what sort of mandate it will have. Polls have the party hovering at roughly 30%, somewhat below the likely threshold for a majority government.In any case, St-Pierre Plamondon is laying the groundwork for confrontation with the federal government. He has mused about defunding the office of Quebec’s lieutenant-governor (the British Crown’s representative in the province) and promised to introduce a law to abolish the province’s ties with the monarchy, which separatists see as the ultimate symbol of oppression of Canada’s French minority.St-Pierre Plamondon also tore into Carney, after the prime minister said the government will probably increase immigration rates in the country. Doing so, St-Pierre Plamondon said, was an “abuse of power” that would have further nefarious effects on French-language services in Quebec.For a man who trades on his relative youthfulness, St-Pierre Plamondon’s attacks on the monarchy have the whiff of anachronism – the kind of thing the PQ did in its 1970-era heyday.Attacking the federal government is similarly outdated, and potentially risky for St-Pierre Plamondon. Carney remains popular in Quebec, and is likely to remain so, at least until the existential threat of Trump recedes.