Parti Quebecois leader 'serene' ahead of confidence vote

Parti Quebecois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon stands at his seat with colleagues Pascal Berube and Joel Arseneau as the National Assembly resumes for its spring session, Tuesday, January 31, 2023 at the legislature in Quebec City. The three Parti Quebecois MNAs were allowed to sit after a special legislation was voted to allow them to sit without swearing to the King. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jacques Boissinot

Five months after the Parti Québécois (PQ) got its lowest score in a general election since it was founded, PQ leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon says he is 'serene' about the confidence vote on Saturday.

He did not, however, go so far as to say what threshold of support he wants to obtain to continue.

The PQ will be meeting in a Sherbrooke hotel on Saturday, and it will be the first time that St-Pierre Plamondon, who will be crowned leader in October 2020, will undergo a vote of confidence from the members.

In an interview with The Canadian Press on Tuesday, the pro-independence leader said he had confidence in the membership.

"I'm very calm about this issue," he said in a telephone interview after a tour of Europe. "This is a normal and absolutely necessary process in our party."

The leader refused to venture an acceptable or expected threshold of membership support for his continued tenure.

"I have done the best job I could since I was given the mandate to be leader," he said. "I will let the members decide if my work deserves their support. I am preparing for a congress that is still substantial. As for the vote of confidence, serenity is the word."

The party's rules state that the leader must submit to a vote of confidence, an exercise that has sometimes been painful, even fateful, for his predecessors.

In 2005, Bernard Landry, then leader of the opposition, resigned after winning the support of 76.2 per cent of convention delegates, to the surprise of everyone.

Could St-Pierre Plamondon do the same?

"No, because I have the constant support of the members and the authorities in our action," he said. "We are a political party capable of dialogue and, above all, in solution mode. In the adversity we experienced before the election, it helped a lot to have people in solution mode, capable of uniting."

The PQ elected only three members to the national assembly last October, seven less than in 2018.

The party received 600,000 votes in 2022, or 14.61 in 2018.

The PQ leader can still count on a favourable trend that seems to be emerging. According to the most recent Léger poll published in February, his party gained three per cent in voting intentions, at 18 per cent, compared to the October poll.

Sovereignty is also on the rise in the electorate, with 38 per cent of respondents supporting the option, six points more than the last poll on this issue conducted by Léger and Le Devoir in 2018.

In addition, the PQ still leads in the collection of popular financing, i.e. contributions made by voters.

In addition to Landry's shock departure, PQ conventions have been perilous ordeals for other leaders as well.

In 1996, Lucien Bouchard, despite the aura surrounding him following the 1995 referendum, won 76.7 per cent of the votes of PQ supporters.

But Jacques Parizeau, in 1992, won 92 per cent of the votes of his troops.

In 1982, after threatening to resign, the founding father of the PQ, Premier René Levesque, obtained a score of 95 per cent.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on March 8, 2023.