Front Burner - Quebec separatism in the 'elbows up' era

Episode Date: October 7, 2026

With the election of the Parti Québécois in Quebec Monday night, it's the first time in twelve years that Canada will have a separatist government in power. Over the course of the campaign, the party's leader, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, made clear some of the fights he could take up with Ottawa, over issues like immigration. He also vowed to hold a referendum on separation in his first term, a promise he doubled down on this week despite only securing a minority government.With the Alberta referendum coming up, this means Mark Carney is now dealing with separatist movements on both ends of the country, at a time when he's trying to lead a united front against U.S. aggression. Montreal-based journalist Martin Patriquin joins us to talk about what this election means for the country right now. For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

I almost bailed on brunch this morning. I opened my banking app before leaving, saw a few unexpected expenses, and just felt that instant wave of stress. I hear you. Money stress is real and it's exhausting when it feels never ending. Yeah. It feels like every time I get a handle on things,

three unexpected bills hit at once. I'm just trying to get to a point where managing money doesn't feel so overwhelming. Honestly, just being open about it. it helps take away some of that pressure. You're definitely not alone in feeling that way. Thanks. It really does help to just talk it through and hear how other people are handling it. Money is a big part of life, but you don't have to navigate the conversation alone. If you're looking for real stories, an open dialogue, check out Count Us In.

A web series where host Michelle Spina sits down with members of Gen Z to share real perspectives and experiences on money, life, and what comes next. paid content with Desjardé. Now streaming on CBC Gem. This is a CBC podcast. Hey everybody, I'm Jamie Poisson. With the election of the Party Quebec-Cois in Quebec on Monday night, it's the first time in 12 years that Canada will have a separatist government in power. In his victory speech, PQ leader Paul St. Pierre Plamondon

spoke hopefully about Quebec's future, about his willingness to collaborate with other provinces and the federal government, as long as it's in Quebec's interest. But over the campaign, he made clear some of the fights that he could take up with Ottawa, around issues like immigration. And he also vowed to hold a referendum on separation in his first term, a promise that he doubled down on this week, despite only getting a minority government.

With the Alberta referendum coming up, this means Mark Carney is now dealing with separatist movements on both sides of the country, at a time when he's trying to lead a united front against U.S. aggression. So what does this election and a future referendum on Quebec sovereignty mean for the country right now? Martin Patrick Quinn is a journalist based in Montreal. He covers Quebec politics and he recently wrote a great profile in the Walriss about Quebec's next premier. Martin, great to have you. Thanks for being here.

Thanks for having me, Jamie. So we're in a pretty patriotic moment with the trade war going on threats against scant of sovereignty. Carney is super popular in Quebec or the liberal. hold the majority of the federal writings. There's low interest in a referendum on separation right now in Quebec. So how do you explain the fact that the PQ, a separatist party, won this election on a separatist platform? Basically, what you're seeing is a return to the Quebec politics of your, to a certain

extent. One of the very natural instincts on the part of a voting population has always been like, if a party's been in power for a long time, that party gets unpopular. There's a desire to, quote, vote those bastards out, as they used to say in the old plans. And that was the case here, except with Quebec politics, voting the bastards out means voting for bastards that are either separatist or federalist in nature. Under the CAQ, the Coalition of Avenir Quebec, that was sort of muddied for eight years because they were neither separatist nor federalist.

They were sort of autonomous. What has happened now is there's just basically a return to the Quebec politics of your, That is to say the knife edge between federalists and sovereignists. It's like deja vu all over again. I was talking to someone this morning, John Paracela, who's former chief of staff to a couple of liberal premiers. And he's just like some of the rhetoric that we've seen during this campaign, you know, is a return to the 1960s and 1970s.

That's how far back we're reaching by going through this exercise that we just did. Say more about that to me. Just give me some examples. As far as St. Pierre Plamando was concerned, you know, the importance of having Quebec as its own country to protect its interests, to protect its linguistic, you know, its linguistic minority, you know, French's minority in Canada. So to protect all that, to, you know, ensure the survival of French Canadians or Quebecers, we have to separate. We have to close ranks.

I mean, the interesting thing is he says all of this in a way that's sort of like he's extremely popular. He's the most popular leader in the province. and the separation stuff, the talk about having another referendum has really been as millstone. And that's demonstrated in what we just saw. You know, I was talking to a Philadelphia, the poll analyst recently. One of the things that he said, and we sort of workshopped and confirmed this together, they got about 28% of the vote, which is the lowest support for any government elected in Canadian electoral history. Really?

Yes. There was a close one in 1921 in Alberta, but Paul St. Pierre Palamando was even lower last night by about half a percentage point. Okay. And just second place, the liberals. Second place liberals, yeah. And like, just to give you an idea, the divide between the liberals at Paltese, Quebecwa. Paltzcapecoa got about 1.2 million. The liberals got 1 million. So it's like it's all very, very close. It's just the the number of parties that were running. just really divided the vote up. And you talked about throwing the bastards out. I mean, maybe it's worth noting here that the, the CAQ, who would want two majority,

what I mean, did they ever throw them out? They had won two majority governments in a row, and then they did not get a single seat. Not a single seat. There's a great word in French called de gringalade, which basically means everything collapses. It's just an outer, utter collapse. And this was a de gringolade.

You know, in 2002, to Collision-Vernier, Quebec, got 90 seats, and they got zero last night. That is astonishing. Particularly when you consider, you know, coming out of COVID, Francois de Gaulle, who didn't run in this election, you know, who resigned earlier this year. But, you know, coming out of COVID and going into that election in 2022 was by far the most popular premier. So just goes to show a couple of things, like what four years can do to a government and the extent

to which campaigns matter. Let's talk about the guy who led the peak. hue to this victory, however narrow. It was Paul Saint-Pierre Poulmandon. He sometimes talked about as this kind of bright, youngish voice in Quebec politics. He took over the party in 2020. He led them in the last election where they only actually got three seats. So this is a pretty big reversal in portions for them. What did he offer Quebecers that they liked? Look, relative youth, about 20 years younger than Francois Lago, very, very good. In terms of speaking, very, very good. ever present and just someone who hadn't been on the scene forever.

We all want change. We are that change. Give us a chance. As opposed to Francois de Gaussaud who had been there, not only over eight years, you know, the Conissimo in Quebec was first elected in 2018, but Francois de Gaulle was an old hand. He used to be a parts of Quebec guy way back in the day. And so just sort of like this idea of a breath of fresh air, someone who can change

the old sort of Quebec status quo political culture. That's the way I saw it anyway. And throughout his career, he's always sort of traded on his relative youth. It was part of a group called Generations of Zide with none other than than Middle Inus Jolie back in the day. And the idea was that there's these political orphans out there that we're not being heard because the young people aren't being heard. And that's what he sort of based his political trajectory on.

And that's what we're sort of. story he's seeing now, look, everything's relative. He's 49 years old. He's not youthful by any means, but he still strikes Quebecers as being just that. And I want to talk about his trajectory a little bit more. He wrote a report at one point called Dare to Rethink the PQ, where he was tasked with coming up with ideas to modernize and expand the party's reach. Just what kind of stuff was he advising the party to do years ago, right?

Oh, my God. Yeah. So, did a little bit of context. In 2016, he ran for the Parts-Kéquebecque leadership and lost to Jean-François-Lise. As a sort of consolation prize, Mr. Lise gave him the mandate to basically do a post-mortem of the party. Why is it going so badly? And effectively, he came up with this report that you just mentioned that is, by the way, no longer available on the PQ website. You'll see why in a second.

because Mr. Plamooro basically said, look, this party is too old, too white, and too xenophobic for the pallets of younger voters in this province. So he was suggesting a raft of different things, stuff that would look like not out of place in something that Justin Trudeau would have done. That is to say, positions within the party reserve for visible minorities, making sure that there's enough visible minorities in the candidacy to sort of reflect the population. This is the stuff, the socio-democratic stuff of the parts of Quebecois of Yor, the sense that we are going to try to separate Quebec, but we want to bring in, we want to enfranchise visible minorities as much as possible because they are essentially the demographic future of the province. And when I say of Yor, I'm talking about like Gerald Godin and René Nevec, people like that who were really pushing for that because they saw that that is necessarily the future. You can't just please one portion of the population, no matter how big it is. Mm-hmm. And back then, how was he thinking about the referendum question?

So back then, he was thinking that it was not a great idea to hold one in the first mandate, that it's not something that should be jammed down Quebecers' throats, that it was, commanding in French, the obsession of referendar, the obsession about a referendum is also something that's doing vast damage to this party and basically rendering it unelectable. So his idea was, yes, hold a referendum in the first mandate, but don't force it. You have to have the will of the people of Quebec in order to do it. I almost bailed on brunch this morning.

I opened my banking app before leaving, saw a few unexpected expenses, and just felt that instant wave of stress. I hear you. Money stress is real and it's exhausting when it feels never ending. Yeah. It feels like every time I get a handle on things, three unexpected bills hit at once. I'm just trying to get to a point where managing money doesn't feel so overwhelming.

Honestly, just being open about it helps take away some of that pressure. You're definitely not alone in feeling that way. Thanks. It really does help to just talk it through and hear how other people are handling it. Money is a big part of life, but you don't. have to navigate the conversation alone. If you're looking for real stories, an open dialogue, check out, Count Us In. A web series where host Michelle Spina sits down with members of Gen Z to share real

perspectives and experiences on money, life, and what comes next. Paid content with Desjardé. Now streaming on CBC Gem. This ascent isn't for everyone. You need grit to climb this high this often. You've got to be an underdog that. always over delivers. You've got to be 6,500 hospital staff, 1,000 doctors, all doing so much with so little. You've got to be Scarborough, defined by our uphill battle and always striving towards new heights.

And you can help us keep climbing. Donate at Lovescarbro.com. C.A. Fast forward here to 2020, I guess. This is the fun part. Yeah, because it really, things are going to start to shift here. Spoiler alert. He's running for leadership again, and this time he's promising a referendum in the PQ's first term. And he wins. And he increasingly takes on this kind of anti-wote persona. I just, what changed in those four years and how does he evolve over time? I think he was riding away back in 2016 where leaders were getting elected by saying things that he was saying.

I mean, there's no better example than Justin Trudeau, right? So basically, there was an election in 2018, Jean-François-Lise, lost pretty badly. And in 2020, when their PQ was having its leadership, those sands were shifting. We had just had four years of Trump. We were going into COVID. And then by the time, 2024, 2025 rolled around, we were sort of seeing a complete knee-jerk reaction against what he had ran in 2016. And this isn't something that's particularly to Quebec. I think it's like all over the place. It just so happened that in Paul St. Pierre-Plamando, they had someone who could argue as passionately for one thing and then do the polar opposite and argue as passionately for

the polar opposite in the space of a decade. You've written that if his political trajectory is any indication, he will be one of the most extreme leaders ever to head the PQ, having won the job by betraying nearly every ideal he once held. Just unpack that a bit more for me. What do you mean by extreme, like just, yeah, where exactly do you see him heading? Here, and I'll give you the one example, and I use it in the piece. And it's what really bothered me with his leadership campaign. Earlier on in the campaign, he went to a Quebec City area high school and had a bunch of stood a podium with a bunch of other PQ candidates around them.

Literally points at the school behind him and goes, this school is overflowing. You know, it's bursting at the seams. And why is that? It's because of immigrants. The leader of the Parti Quebecua used the Regé Comptois High School as a backdrop to explain why his party wants to reduce immigration levels in the province. These are high school kids, man. These are kids that are, let us all remember, are going to school in French and learning French

because they have to because their parents didn't come from English Canada anywhere. So they are mandated by Bill 101 to go to French. They are literally doing that. And he comes out and escapes go to them in that fast. And this is right at the outside of the campaign. And that really kind of underscored it for me because, you know, you look at his trajectory over the last couple of years. He's blamed immigrants for everything.

But it also has an impact on health care, especially given the stats we have on asylum seekers. It has an impact on the cost of housing and the accessibility of housing because... The list goes on. And it's almost like a way like... And again, you see this. isn't particularly unique to Quebec is that when things are going badly, when the economy is rough or when it's, things are expensive, it's very, very easy to find scapegoats. And I think he found his, I think he found his scapegoat. I'm not blaming anyone, specifically persons are not to blame, but we had very bad policies, public policies on immigration over the past years. It has consequences. And if you look at the polls. And this is popular. Yeah, it is. Look, Quebec is going. through right now what Ontario

went through about 25 years ago. I'll never forget this as I was like, I was driving back from Toronto and I was in Cornwall and I saw a group of Sikhs walking down the street. And I'm like, this is game changing because what happens with

immigration is, I mean, it's so plainly obvious. Toronto becomes way too expensive so people start going elsewhere. It's natural. It's sort of the pattern of immigration. The one place that I didn't see this happening has always been Quebec because Montreal was always able to absorb that. That changed over the last 10 years and you started seeing people that weren't white

in places like Tuvali, Viya, Drummondville, Quebec City, Eastern townships in the Grandi, Waterloo, et cetera, et cetera. So with that happening, you have a certain amount of backlash, right? The thing that bothers me is when politicians come out and sort of appeal to that lowest common denominator, which is called fear. So he's pledged to hold a referendum on separation in his first term after Donald Trump leaves office. Just take me through the pitch that he's been making because it's not very popular in Quebec right now. Support has been hovering around 30% in the pools. I mean, it's plainly obvious why he had to come out and promise that in the first place.

And this promise goes well back before the election campaign. He had to because of the base. The base of the PQ desperately wants to have a referendum in order to. to become leader of that, you have to appease that base. So that's why he's come out and said that. And he's sort of continuing to have to say it because it's a bit of a trap. Once you say it, it's hard to walk back, right? And then what happened during the campaign was this blessing called Donald Trump because all of a sudden he was able to go, look, things are too chaotic with Donald Trump. He's too nuts. He's too dangerous. He's too much of an existential threat to Quebecers

for us to move on a referendum. We can't do both at the same time. So what we're going to do is we're going to do a referendum once he's out of office. In a lengthy social media post, St. Pierre Plamondon said an issue as crucial as Quebec's political future requires conditions that allow for an informed and calm debate. Unpredictability from the U.S. administration would harm our process, as well as the quality of the debate.

Which gives him the exact amount of breathing room to sort of get away from that promise while still having that promise while still having that promise in place. Do you see what I mean? Yep. And so the chaos machine that did as Donald Trump actually benefited him during this, during this election. Well, what do you think's going to happen in 2028?

He's got a minority government. Like, what's the likeliest scenario? So is Trump going to leave? Like, do we know that for sure? Yes. I guess I guess you've got a few options. Oh, one is which, yeah. 2028 is far long time away.

I don't think that there's going to be any meaningful shift on separation on the idea of having a referendum in Quebec between now and then. What I think they're going to bank on, frankly, is Mark Carney is very, very popular now in Quebec, as he is in most places in the country. But what happens to a Mark Carney when Donald Trump is gone? The same thing that happens to every other person that stays in office. They become unpopular eventually. And maybe the idea is once Donald Trump is gone, Mark Carney is suddenly challengeable. Suddenly you can criticize them and criticize Quebec's place in the country or Quebec's treatment by the country once Mark Carney becomes less popular. That's the route I see.

The other thing too is, I mean, we can't forget that, yes, the Ponce Quebequa is the main separatist party in the country. There's also Quebec Saudida which won nine seats. So 9 plus 59 is 68, which gives it a majority should they, you know, form some sort of coalition on the idea of having a referendum. That is, that is very, very difficult from the outset just because Quebec Solider and Parts-Chebeco really don't get along for reasons that I was just talking about. Quebec Solitaire is very, very much not in favor of what Mr. Platt, St. Pierre Palmona has said on issues of immigration and integration. kind of thing. So the idea that those two parties would necessarily get together on something like this, it's not to say it's far-fetched, it's difficult, but look, these sort of coalitions happen. Like if there's an idea that this is for the good of the country, that Quebec will can

only succeed as a country, maybe there is a scenario where those two get together. What do you think Mark Carney thinks of the peak you win? I think everybody except for the parts of Quebec, wa, where the side of relief when the, when the results were coming in last night. The minority. The minority. It being a minority government. Not only does it completely hobble the idea of being able to hold this referendum and the

existential threat that comes with that, but also minority governments don't generally last all that long, right? I was talking to someone this morning saying, you know, like 18 to 36 months kind of thing, and then we're going to have another election. So on those two fronts, I think the federal government's pretty okay with what happened last night. It's not the best scenario, the best scenario for the federal government, for the provincial liberals who have won. The second best is the PQU winning with the minority. You know, this is a crucial time for our country. It's a crucial time for Quebec. It's a

crucial time for our country. This is not a time to wait for something a few years down the road. It's a time to act. It's a time for boldness. In the meantime, though, what might the dynamics between the Carney government and the Peku government be? Like, can they, create some problems for the Carney government. The problem he has is this, and it's it's irony of ironies for a separatist leader, is that he can't, Paul St. Pierre Plemando, who wants to basically undermine Canadian sovereignty by pulling Quebec out of the country, can't be seen to his voting public as a danger to Canadian sovereignty, right? Because Mark Carney is so popular and beyond that just because

of what Donald Trump is doing, right? So you saw in his speech last night that he was actually pretty magnanimous. He was saying, you know, if Quebec's interests are at heart, you will find me, I'm going to have the wording here. You will find me to be direct, frank, and transparent. And, you know, and a good faith partner in the face of that, which guess what? Every single premier of Quebec would say that. There's not a single person that ran last night that wouldn't say the exact same thing. Put it this way, it wasn't a particularly nationalistic thing to say.

And I think that would have been much, much different had he won a majority. Plamandau said last week that he would oppose any increase in immigration levels from day one. Carney on the other hand recently told the New York Times he plans to increase immigration levels. What about that as an example? So Quebec already controls the majority of its immigration. And so, yes, he has the power to raise and lower. Paul St. Pierre Plamando does. I don't know.

I don't know what he's going to do about that. The only thing I can rely on is precedent. In 2018, the Coalition de Janeiro-Chequebec under Franco Lago basically ran much of his campaign on saying, we're going to reduce immigration levels. This isn't a particularly new issue here. And I'll explain why. It's basically because immigration and the erosion of the French fact

are sort of equated, right? It's sort of seen one's more damage to the other. Entirely debatable if that's the case. Frankly, I don't think it is. Regardless. Braswell Lago ran on reducing immigration roles in 2018, and he did for the first two years. And then he started increasing them and increasing them and increasing them. Soon enough, they were back up to beyond what they were before for one very simple reason.

There is a screaming need for immigration in this province because, you know, we are the second oldest, the second oldest population in the country outside of Atlanta, Canada. Yeah. And you have very powerful lobbies. So the Farmers Lobby, the Montreal Business Council, all of these entities that are saying like, look, you are kicking the economy in the teeth right now by doing this kind of thing. So could he have done it with the majority? Probably. He probably very easily could have waltzed in and said, yeah, we're going to reduce this.

Does he have the power to do that now? Not nearly as much because of the liberal opposition. But beyond that, I think, like, even if you did reduce it, you would eventually have to bring them back up for the exact same reason that the Collison Avenue, Quebec, did back in 2020. I know, too, he wants to expand Quebec secularism laws. Currently, people wearing religious attire like hijabs or kippas are banned from certain public service jobs, like teachers, police officers. Yeah. That law is being reviewed by the Supreme Court. Uh-huh.

But he also wants to expand the ban on religious symbols to elementary schools. And could that be setting him up on a kind of collision course with the federal government? For sure. He doesn't have the cars that he would have had had a majority. That said, look, I think on certain issues like that, he wouldn't have any takers in the Liberal Party. He would certainly not have any takers in Quebec Solidire. He might have piecemeal support amongst Potscants Sabetar. on sort of individual things like that.

But the idea that he's going to waltz in right now and go no religious symbols, not only for teachers, by the way, it's also for elementary school students. Yeah. Going that far right, I think it's way too much. It's a bridge too far for them to a certain extent.

I just want to bring the relationship with the U.S. into this conversation a couple weeks ago. The Journal de Montreal reported that someone from the federal government warned the premier at the time, Christine Frischett, who lost her seat last night, of potential U.S. interference in the Quebec election. What exactly was the basis of that warning? It was a group, it was called Dark Defense Analysis Research Corporation. They basically wrote a paper.

It's very like a Minrovian group in a sense that they're looking to expand the U.S. sphere of influence by way of territory. And so one of the ways to do that this paper posited was to basically, actively undermine the federal government by supporting the Boutskemecoe. And this obviously caused quite a stir. Interestingly, it didn't cause nearly the stir that the Coliseo-envenile Quebec wanted. In fact, it backfired on them because it was sort of seen that they had leaked this to reporters at exactly the wrong time. Like they were doing this as sort of like as a way to get ahead in the election.

But it remains that that paper did say that. And what was said in that paper wasn't entirely. False. Does Donald Trump want to undermine Canadian sovereignty demonstrably? What's one way to do that? Support separatist movements. The Globe and Mail had that phenomenal piece this weekend talking about the extent to which the U.S. government is willing to do that. Yes, in Alberta. In Alberta, in Alberta, yes. Three meetings in Washington, D.C. last year in which Jeffrey Rath has publicly said he was a part of. The Globe is now reporting that Dennis Modry, co-founder of the Alberta Prosperity Project, was also there and offered up royalties from a new West Coast pipeline through Washington State and land for a railway line to

Alaska. What Dark was arguing was basically doing the exact same thing with the Paltzky Vigua. Diffica, huge language barrier, by the way. But, yeah, they were advocating basically that the Paltese Kibiqua is a perfect vessel by which to undermine Mark Carney. Mm-hmm. How did Plamondon respond to that? With a bit of outrage, I mean, he said that Dark had never contacted him, that there was

never any communications between the two groups between his party and Dark. But suffice to say that what that paper said, as I said, was true, is that the PQ necessarily undermines Canadian sovereignty, which plays into Donald Trump's favor. In less than two weeks, Albertans will vote on whether they want to hold a sovereignty referendum and is looking almost certain that they're going to vote against it, but still separatism has become this mainstream political idea in Alberta with significant support. Yeah. When we look at both these things together, you know, this minority win in Quebec and Alberta, what do you think it means for Canada and for Mark Carney to have both these movements playing out at the same time? I think you sort of have to take one for what it's worth.

Now, suit to reserve, as we say in French, in Alberta, things could go really badly. They could vote by some fluke. there could be a vote to hold a referendum on taking Alberta out of the country, in which case, you know, all bets are off. In the case of the PQ, I think what we saw last night for Mark Carney is they dodged a heck of a bullet. What we saw last night wasn't an exercise on the part of the Quebec people to, you know, want to take Quebec out of the country. They just wanted a new leader.

So it's almost like the best of the words for the federal government. So look, what happened last night combined with what would probably be a resounding no to have a holding a referendum, Mark Carney stands to look pretty freaking good after all of this, despite the fact that there are two active separatist movements in this country. Martin, thank you. Thank you for this. Really appreciate it. Thanks very much. All right.

That's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC podcast, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.