Paul St-Pierre Plamondon believes he can win a referendum

Paul St-Pierre Plamondon says he doesn’t believe he would lose a third referendum if his party wins the provincial election.

The latest Léger poll released earlier this week placed the Parti Québécois (PQ) comfortably ahead in voting intentions and could win a majority of seats in the National Assembly.

However, respondents’ support for sovereignty is only 37 per cent, with eight per cent undecided. The poll showed that a quarter of respondents who support the PQ would vote “no” in a referendum on sovereignty.

The PQ leader said in a press scrum on Thursday that “these are encouraging figures overall. There are a lot of undecided people. We are asking the population to listen. We tell people: if you find us relevant and intelligent on most subjects, there is a chance that we are also relevant on this subject (sovereignty). We are ready to hold a winning referendum, and we will do it, that is our program. And that is the same message that we constantly have.”

Persistent minority support

It was pointed out that for several years, support for sovereignty has been the minority and according to Qc125, all polls since 2016 have placed support for the “Yes” vote in the minority range between 25 per cent and 41 per cent. Plamondon added that “the 1995 referendum was in that range before Jacques Parizeau took power.”

However, even after Parizeau was elected in September 1994, a CROP Environics poll in February 1995, eight months before the October referendum took place, support for sovereignty was only 40 per cent. On the day of the vote, Oct. 30, 1995, the “Yes” vote had garnered 49.42 per cent.

Plamondon says polls are not the motive for his actions.

“If I had operated by polls alone, I would never have taken on the role of leader of the Parti Québécois. (…) You can’t make policy based on the poll of the day. If the diagnosis is correct, the answers will follow.”

Ready to govern

Plamondon also said that he is ready to take office regardless of the support for sovereignty at the time of the next election. “I will govern in any case, but no one will be ignorant of the fact that I am an independentist and that I intend for Quebec to become a country.”

He explained that a potential PQ government will have the task of convincing a majority of voters with the arguments it brings. “We don’t see a future for French in Canada, we don’t see a future for our economic interests. Migration issues are completely beyond our control and Quebec’s independence will therefore lead us into a chapter where we won’t be caught like François Legault was.”

According to him, “the failure of Philippe Couillard and François Legault is glaring. They claimed to take care of real issues. Then these real issues deteriorate often because of federal policies that are made without our consent.”

The press scrum followed a speech by the PQ leader in front of 310 guests invited by the Chamber of Commerce and an exchange with its president, Michel Leblanc.

Immigration and labour shortage

Leblanc criticized the PQ leader for repeating the same rhetoric as Premier Legault, according to whom the business community “wanted ‘cheap labour,’ that we did not want to pay a lot. People who call on temporary workers, it’s not that they don’t want to pay a lot, it’s that they want someone,” argued Leblanc, citing the labour shortage.

Plamondon responded that Quebec businesses are seriously lagging in productivity compared to other G-7 countries and that they need to invest quickly in robotization and automation of their operations. He also tried to be reassuring by talking about a gradual decline in the number of immigrants.

Several PQ supporters attended the scrum, including former Premier Pauline Marois and former PQ leader Pierre Karl Péladeau.

–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews