Quebec sovereignty talk resurfaces as Parti Québécois gains in polls

Open this photo in gallery: The sovereigntist Parti Québécois has seized a commanding lead in provincial polls, a margin that has grown rather in recent months. Parti Quebecois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon questions the government during question period, Oct. 8.Jacques Boissinot/The Canadian Press

Secession. Captain Canada. Fifty per cent plus one.

These phrases have rarely been on the lips of the country’s political class since Quebec’s previous independence referendum in 1995. But today – although further down the agenda than concerns about inflation and immigration – talk of national unity is again being murmured in the halls of power.

The sovereigntist Parti Québécois has seized a commanding lead in provincial polls, ahead of François Legault’s government by nearly 15 points in some surveys – a margin that has grown rather than shrunk in recent months.

What’s more, the party’s charismatic young leader, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, is promising a referendum in his first mandate if he’s elected.

Prominent federalists in Montreal and Ottawa are starting to sound the alarm, publicly and privately, about the once-dismissed possibility of another vote on Quebec’s place in Canada.

The 2026 provincial election is an eternity away in political terms, and Donald Trump’s election and tariff threats have recently sucked up the province’s political oxygen. But some worry that even with those caveats, there is no obvious challenger to Mr. Plamondon and no obvious leader for a potential No campaign.

“The example of Brexit shows that once you start this machine of a referendum, you have no idea what the outcome might be,” said André Pratte, chair of the Quebec Liberal Party’s national policy committee. “Certainly David Cameron didn’t think that Brexit would win the referendum and then it happened,” he added, referring to the former British prime minister.

There has been no groundswell of popular appetite for independence in the time the PQ has risen in the polls. Support for leaving Canada remains at its historic norm of about 35 per cent.

But Quebec’s political landscape is fragmented. The governing Coalition Avenir Québec – formed by Mr. Legault to move on from the independence debate – is mired in a second-term malaise after six years in power. The provincial Liberals, traditional federalist standard-bearers, are at the beginning of a leadership race. Two other parties of the left and right both draw double-digit support in the polls.

That means the PQ could win the next election and call a referendum with just over 30 per cent of the votes.

Two past advisers to Liberal prime ministers recently published opinion pieces about what they see as the danger of Quebec stumbling into a divisive contest about its future. Gerald Butts, former principal secretary to Justin Trudeau, said that his conversations with knowledgeable people in the Ottawa-Montreal corridor reveal an anxiety that isn’t shared by the wider Canadian public.

“This is a bigger risk than people are apprehending,” he said.

Mr. Butts, whose article “The Quebec Secession Crisis is Coming, and Canada Isn’t Ready” was published in The Walrus, described himself as “scarred” by the closeness of the 1995 referendum, when he was a graduate student at McGill University. The No side won by less than a percentage point after spending years taking victory for granted.

In the event of a third referendum – the question of sovereignty was also put to voters in 1980 – Mr. Butts fears that English Canada won’t react with the same urgency that produced the Unity Rally of 1995, when opponents of independence came to Montreal from around the country.

Quebec’s prominence in national politics has declined since then, Mr. Butts argued – Alberta, notably, has emerged as a focus of national-unity anxieties in the meantime – and the rest of Canada may simply “have less patience for this discussion.” That indifference could turn to hostility and be amplified in the hothouse of social media – a dynamic that would benefit the sovereigntist cause.

Last time, he said, “We didn’t need to worry about someone burning a fleur de lys and broadcasting it to their millions of followers.”

Eddie Goldenberg, a key adviser to then-prime minister Jean Chrétien, echoed Mr. Butts’s concerns and called on Justin Trudeau to step down so he could serve as leader of the No side. The appeal, published in National Newswatch, mirrors worries among Quebec federalists about who would serve as Captain Canada in a sovereignty campaign.

The Quebec Liberal Party is without a permanent leader, although the entrance of former federal Liberal cabinet minister Pablo Rodriguez to the leadership race has drawn an uptick in media coverage.

Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives are likely to form the next federal government, but it’s unclear how he would handle an independence debate, said Charles Breton, executive director of the Centre of Excellence on the Canadian Federation at the Institute for Research on Public Policy.

For Jean-François Lisée, the leader of the Parti Québécois from 2016 to 2018, there’s a certain relish in seeing English-Canadian commentators express surprise once more about the rise of a sovereigntist option. He recalls the horrified shock on the eve of the 1995 vote as a Yes victory suddenly seemed possible.

“It’s déjà vu all over again,” said Mr. Lisée.