The Parti Québécois is projected to win Quebec's provincial election, putting a party that campaigns on independence in charge of Canada's second-most-populous province and raising the prospect of a third referendum on separating from Canada.
The result hands the PQ a mandate to govern the majority French-speaking province of roughly 8.5 million people, and its leader has promised to hold a sovereignty vote if he takes power. Polls indicate only about 30% of Quebecers back breaking away from Canada, a figure that has barely moved in decades and would put a referendum well short of the simple majority it needs to pass.
The province has voted on separation twice before. In 1980, Quebecers rejected sovereignty in a referendum by a margin of about 60% to 40%. In 1995, the "No" side won by a razor-thin 50.6% to 49.4% — a result so close it prompted the federal government in Ottawa to pass the Clarity Act, which requires any future referendum question to be unambiguous before Canada would negotiate a split.
PQ leader Paul Plamondon has said a sovereignty vote would occur only after US President Donald Trump leaves office, a condition that pushes any referendum at least into 2029 and signals the party is in no rush to force the issue.
The projection is a headache for Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's government, which has spent its first months in office focused on trade and security tensions with the Trump administration. A provincial government openly working toward independence would complicate federal-provincial relations on everything from health transfers to energy projects, even if a referendum remains a distant and currently losing proposition.
Quebec's separatist movement has faded as an electoral force since the 1995 vote. The PQ governed the province from 1976 to 1985, from 1994 to 2003, and again from 2012 to 2014, but it has not held power in more than a decade, and support for independence has declined steadily as older voters who backed the cause are replaced by younger Quebecers with weaker attachment to the idea.
The 30% support figure is roughly half the level recorded in the mid-1990s, when the movement came within about 54,000 votes of ending Canada as it exists. Federalist politicians in Ottawa have long argued that a clear majority of Quebecers would reject separation, and the polling suggests that remains the case today.
Even a losing referendum carries risk for Canada. The 1995 vote triggered a national unity crisis, a sharp drop in the Canadian dollar, and a federal reference to the Supreme Court that produced the 1998 ruling that Quebec cannot secede unilaterally without a clear democratic expression of will.
