When Quebecers go to the polls Monday, for many, sovereignty will be on the ballot. According to the latest polls, Parti Québécois (PQ) leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon appears poised to form government after the Oct. 5 election and has promised to hold a third referendum during his first term in office, but only after Donald Trump leaves the White House. “There are very strong federalists that I know who are basically saying, roll the dice. If they get in and hold a referendum, we’ll defeat it for a third time,” said Tom Mulcair, a political analyst for CTV News. “I think that is a bit of a dangerous game to be playing right now,” he added. “The smart money would be on defeating, of course, the party that says that it wants to hold a referendum that would be destructive socially and economically for Quebec and indeed for all of Canada.” Polls show sovereignty is deeply unpopular going into election day. Synopsis found that just 25 per cent would vote yes if a referendum were held tomorrow. But the PQ leader remains steadfast. “I think (Quebecers) should not be afraid,” he said during a campaign stop on Monday. “Hundreds of nations are governing themselves with their own government and their own institutions and they are doing very well.” St-Pierre Plamondon’s own party is also doing well. The PQ is currently projected to win 67 seats, three more than the 64 needed to form a majority, according to poll aggregator site qc125.com. “We have to distinguish here support for the PQ and support for independence because these are two distinct things,” said Daniel Béland, director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada. Delaying a possible referendum until after Trump leaves office may have given some voters space to prioritize other issues, according to Béland. “What is clear is Quebecers want change,” he said. For long-time supporters of sovereignty, there is a belief that public opinion could change over the next two years. “They say only 30 per cent of the people will say yes,” said Gilles Duceppe, former leader of the Bloc Québécois, “but in 1995, three weeks before the date of the vote, we were at 38. It changed a lot.”
