Quebec elects the separatist PQ

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Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is The Current podcast. The Parti Québécois is back in power. For the first time in more than a dozen years, the separatist party has won a mandate, a minority, from Quebecers. And this comes after promising not to hold a referendum on sovereignty until after US President Donald Trump leaves office.

[clapping] [cheering] Mes chers amis, vous êtes tellement beaux et souriants. [laughs] C'est tellement beau de vous voir. Avant toute chose, euh, je veux simplement vous partager l'immense sentiment de fierté qui m'habite. Les mots me manquent pour vous dire à quel point ce soir je suis fier d'être Québécois. [applaudissements] [acclamations]

PQ leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon started his speech by declaring his pride in being Québécois, but he will have to find support from other parties in order to get things done. With me this morning to make sense of the results are two political columnists from Quebec. Valérie Gaudreau is with Le Soleil. Émilie Nicolas writes for Le Devoir. Good morning to you both.

Hello.

Good morning.

Late night for you both, so I'm glad to have you here this morning. Um, Valérie, let's start with you. The PQ wins a minority government with just under 30% of the vote, and the headline from your column in the paper this morning talks about a fragmented Quebec. How did they win?

Exactly. Yeah. Uh, we are, Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon, and he has some kind of mixed feelings because, uh, that's for sure Quebecers are not giving the Parti Québécois a free ride right now. He'll have to negotiate. Uh, he doesn't have the, um, the way is open as he could have hoped, and he said over the last days of campaign, you know, "I need there to be a... I need the majority. I need to get things done," as you just said. So, uh, it's, it's opening quite a new era in Quebec politics in National Assembly. Uh, we're just, um, going out of two mandate from the CAQ, which was huge ma- with huge majorities.

Mm.

So, uh, it's something totally different and it won't be, it won't be easy, that's for sure.

Émilie, what do you make of the results? We'll get into specifics, but, uh, a minority government, and to Valérie's point, the PQ was pushing, uh, at the finish line for a majority. Why, why didn't the electorate, um, give them that?

I think it's really interesting to look at the numbers. Uh, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon got elected, um, as Premier with, uh, a little, a little bit, uh, a little bit, sorry, less than 28% of the popular vote. Um, this is the Premier, uh, who is elected with the least vote, uh, in all of Quebec history. Uh, only second, I think, to Pauline Marois, uh, when she was the Parti Québécois Premier back in 2012. And so this is a very