Parti Quebecois leader remains convinced he can win a sovereignty referendum

The Parti Quebecois feels that if it wins the next election, it can also win a third sovereignty referendum despite polling suggesting Quebecers are not in favour of one. (Karoline Boucher / The Canadian Press)

Paul St-Pierre Plamondon refuses to consider the possibility of a third losing referendum if he takes power.

The latest Léger poll published earlier this week puts the Parti Québécois (PQ) comfortably ahead in voting intentions and even in a position to win a majority of seats in the National Assembly. However, in the same survey, support for sovereignty was only 37 per cent, with eight per cent undecided.

The poll even shows that a quarter of respondents who support the PQ would vote “no” in a referendum on sovereignty.

During a visit to the city on Thursday, where he was a guest of the Metropolitan Montreal Chamber of Commerce, the PQ leader told a press scrum that “these are encouraging figures all in all. There are a lot of undecided voters. We're asking people to listen to us. We say to people: if you find us relevant and intelligent on most subjects, chances are we'll be relevant on this one too (sovereignty).”

St-Pierre Plamondon has no doubt: “We're ready to hold a winning referendum and we're going to do it, that's our program. And that's the same message we keep getting.”

Persistent minority support

When pointed out that support for sovereignty has been in the minority for several years (in fact, according to poll aggregator Qc125, all polls since 2016 have placed support for the “Yes” vote in the minority range of 25 to 41 per cent), St-Pierre Plamondon retorts that “the referendum sequence of the 1995 referendum, from memory, was in those waters before Jacques Parizeau took power.”

Even after Parizeau's election in September 1994, a CROP Environics poll in February 1995, eight months before the October referendum, showed only 40 per cent support for sovereignty. On the day of the vote, 30 October 1995, the “Yes” side had finally won 49.42 per cent of the vote.

Polls, he says, are not a reason for action, at least not for him.

“If I had operated solely on the basis of polls, I would never have taken on the role of leader of the Parti Québécois ... You can't make policy based on the poll of the day. If the diagnosis is right, the answers will follow,” he said.

Ready to govern

St-Pierre Plamondon says he is ready to take power regardless of support for sovereignty in the next election.

“I'll govern in any case, but no one will be unaware that I'm a pro-independence party and that I intend for Quebec to become a country,” he said.

He explained that a future PQ government will have the task of convincing a majority of voters with the arguments it puts forward.

“We don't see a future for French in Canada, we don't see a future for our economic interests,” he said. “We don't see a future for our economic interests. Migration issues are completely out of our hands and so Quebec independence will take us into a chapter where we won't be caught out like François Legault was.”

In his opinion, “the failure of Philippe Couillard and François Legault is glaring. They claimed to be taking care of real business. Then those real issues deteriorate, often because of federal policies that are made without our consent.”

The press scrum followed a speech by the PQ leader to 310 guests invited by the Chamber of Commerce and an exchange with its president, Michel Leblanc.

Immigration and labour shortages

Unsurprisingly, this exchange highlighted a major divergence between the business community and St-Pierre Plamondon, who has promised to reduce the number of permanent and temporary immigrants.

Leblanc criticized the PQ leader for echoing the words of Premier François Legault, who said that the business community “wanted cheap labour.”

St-Pierre Plamondon replied that Quebec companies were lagging seriously behind other G-7 countries in terms of productivity, and that they needed to invest rapidly in robotization and information technology for their operations. He also sought to be reassuring by talking about a gradual reduction in the number of immigrants.

Several PQ supporters attended the dinner, including former premier Pauline Marois and former PQ leader Pierre Karl Péladeau.

St-Pierre Plamondon was warmly applauded by this section of the audience, who had already won over their supporters.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on Nov. 14, 2024.