Parti Québécois wins a minority, and a referendum waits on Trump's exit

Voters in Quebec put the separatist Parti Québécois back in office on Monday for the first time since 2014. Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, a 49-year-old former lawyer, is set to become premier. The party won the night and missed a majority in the 127-seat National Assembly. A majority starts at 64 seats. Canadian media projected a minority on Tuesday morning, with most votes counted.

The shape of the legislature is as important as the winner. The Liberals were projected to gain seats. The Conservatives were projected to gain seats. The Coalition Avenir Québec, the party that has governed the province, was projected to win none. A governing party reduced to an empty benches count is a collapse, not a swing. It leaves Plamondon negotiating with parties that grew on Monday and with a federal government in Ottawa that does not want a third referendum.

The PQ has promised a vote on independence. Plamondon has put the timing after Donald Trump leaves the White House, which on the current calendar is a little over two years away. He has talked about an informed and serene debate, and about not holding the vote in the middle of a US-Canada trade fight. If he keeps that pledge, a third Quebec referendum would fall in 2029 or 2030. The province has already voted twice, in 1980 and in 1995. Polling cited on Tuesday put support for independence near 30 percent. A vote delayed to the end of the decade is a vote the new premier does not have to win, or lose, in his first session.

Prime Minister Mark Carney congratulated Plamondon and said he looked forward to working with him. Carney's line was that a stronger Quebec is part of a stronger Canada. He also pledged support for Quebec businesses and workers hit by tariffs, and he repeated federal lines on homelessness and housing. The congratulation does not settle the file. Plamondon has said he will fight Ottawa where he thinks it steps on provincial ground. Immigration and the monarchy are two of the files already named in the campaign as points of friction.

Carney is already watching a separate unity argument in Alberta, where a process is under way on whether to hold a referendum of its own. A PQ minority in Quebec City does not create a second Alberta. It does mean the prime minister can face a sovereigntist premier in one large province while another province argues about a vote. The practical limit is the seat count. Without 64 seats, Plamondon cannot pass a referendum bill on PQ votes alone. He needs a partner, or he needs to govern as if the promise can wait.

Minority governments in Quebec have been short and transactional. This one begins with a premier who has made independence the party's reason for existing, and who has also given himself a public reason to postpone the vote. The businesses Carney mentioned, the ones exposed to US tariffs, will want a budget and a trade position long before 2029. The PQ caucus will want a date. Those two clocks are the real programme of the next year, and neither one is settled by Monday's result.