After some tension, harmony has returned between Bloc Québécois and PQ

Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet sought to demonstrate on Saturday that harmony had been restored between his party and Parti Québécois leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon at the PQ convention. He also called on Prime Minister Mark Carney to apologize for his remarks about the Battle of the Plains of Abraham.

“I am a member of the Parti Québécois. Your commitment is my commitment. Your struggle is my struggle. And as a PQ member, your leader is my leader,” declared Yves-François Blanchet to PQ members gathered at the Saint-Hyacinthe Convention Centre on Saturday. His speech was met with applause. 

The two sovereignist parties have had tensions recently. 

Last year, the Parti Québécois (PQ) denounced the Bloc Québécois’s “lack of respect” and accused it of recruiting star employees and candidates, including Alexis Deschênes, who ran in the Gaspésie–Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine–Listuguj riding in the last federal election. Deschênes had been a PQ candidate in 2022 and 2014. 

Paul St-Pierre Plamondon had then said that there were “issues of alignment” with the Bloc Québécois. 

Then, in the aftermath of the federal election, the PQ leader criticized the strategy of his sister party in Ottawa, which said it was ready to collaborate with Mark Carney.

In a press scrum on Saturday after his speech, the Bloc leader did not want to elaborate on these “integration issues”. 

“I have never really spoken about that because our attitude is, was and will be to be in full collaboration with the Parti Québécois towards its election, very preferably a majority, towards a referendum that we will try to win,” he stated. 

Apologies demanded

Yves-François Blanchet also criticized Mark Carney because of his speech on the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. 

The Canadian prime minister said Thursday that the Plains of Abraham symbolized “a battlefield, but also the place where Canada began to make the historic choice to prioritize adaptation over assimilation, partnership over domination, collaboration over division.”

“We knew that Mark Carney ignored Quebec because his policies are Canadian, Ontario-centric, oil-focused, multiculturalist, neoliberal and centralizing. But we are seeing again, and even more so, that Mark Carney knows nothing about Quebec and its history,” said the Bloc leader. 

He suggested that the Prime Minister offer a “sincere apology” to all “Francophones in Quebec and Canada.”

–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews