Parti Québécois wins Quebec, short of the 64 seats a referendum needs

The Parti Québécois won Quebec's election on Monday and will form a minority government, the first PQ government in more than a decade, with a promise to hold another referendum on independence from Canada. The party was on track for nearly 60 seats as the count finished, short of the 64 needed for a majority in the 127-seat National Assembly. Without that majority, a referendum bill can be blocked by the opposition.

Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, 49, a former lawyer, is set to become premier. In his victory remarks he said Quebecers had elected the PQ and asked it to work with the other parties, and that he had heard that message. He also said he still pictured an independent Quebec, and that the project would be realised one day. He has said he wants the first meeting with Prime Minister Mark Carney to be in Quebec City, not Ottawa.

The timing he has given for a vote is specific. He has said he would wait until US President Donald Trump is no longer in office, which on the present calendar means after January 2029. That pledge puts the referendum outside a first full year of government and inside a period when a minority can fall. A government that cannot pass a budget does not get to choose the date of a sovereignty vote.

The party that governed Quebec since 2018 was wiped out. The Coalition Avenir Québec entered the campaign with 79 seats. It was shut out of the legislature. Leader Christine Fréchette lost her own seat in Trois-Rivières, conceded, and took responsibility for what she called a difficult result. The Liberals gained seats. The Conservatives elected members of the National Assembly for the first time in this cycle. Québec solidaire, which also supports independence, could hold the balance on a referendum question even if the Liberals and Conservatives vote against one.

Carney congratulated St-Pierre Plamondon on Monday evening. He said building a stronger Quebec was core to the mission of building a stronger Canada, and that the two governments would work together on businesses and workers hit by US tariffs, on jobs, and on housing. The tariff line is not a courtesy. Quebec's aluminium, aerospace and forestry exporters are exposed to Washington's trade measures. A separatist premier and a federal prime minister now have a shared file that has nothing to do with the 1995 question, and a second file that is exactly that question.

Daniel Béland, a political scientist at McGill University, told the Associated Press this was not an election about independence. Support for sovereignty, he said, remains about 30 percent, low by the province's own historical standard. The vote, in his reading, was about removing the CAQ. That reading is the constraint on St-Pierre Plamondon. A minority built on fatigue with the outgoing government is not a mandate counted in referendum votes. Quebec has rejected sovereignty twice, the second time in 1995 by a margin thin enough that both sides still argue about rejected ballots.

The Montreal Gazette reported that the PQ took 46 percent of the seats with 28 percent of the vote, a conversion that first-past-the-post produces when the opposition is split. That gap is the number a federal strategist will use. Seat share is what forms a government. Vote share is what a referendum tests. The two figures are not close.

A second independence-related vote is already on a calendar elsewhere in Canada. Alberta is due to hold a referendum on 19 October 2026. It is not the same question and not the same electorate, but it lands two weeks after Quebec's government changes hands. Ottawa will be answering both at once.

What the minority changes in practice is the order of business. Plamondon can name a cabinet and open talks with Carney on tariffs. He cannot, on these numbers, set a referendum date without a partner. Québec solidaire is the only party likely to supply those votes, and it will want language, climate and housing concessions in return. The Liberals and Conservatives have said they will fight a sovereignty referendum. The first confidence test is therefore not the national question. It is whether a 28 percent party can keep a legislature together long enough to reach 2029.