Quebec’s referendum is on hold until Trump leaves. What if Trumpism does not?

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, leader of the Parti Québécois, said this week that a PQ government would not hold a sovereignty referendum while Donald Trump is president of the United States, even if the party wins a majority in Quebec’s October election.

St-Pierre Plamondon’s announcement illustrates what political observers see as a significant domestic aftershock of Trump’s pressure campaign: the president is reshaping Canadian politics below the federal level, turning Quebec independence from a domestic constitutional question into one increasingly wrapped up in international affairs.

But Trump may make the PQ easier to elect while making its core project harder to achieve. St-Pierre Plamondon, after all, is asking Quebecers to vote for change without requiring them to endorse independence.

“Generally speaking, it’s a problem for the PQ. It’s a problem for Quebec nationalism, because the Trump factor is a fear factor,” explained Frédéric Boily, a political scientist at the University of Alberta’s Campus Saint-Jean. 

Polls already reflect that support for Quebec independence is low. 

Recent data from Angus Reid show that just 26 per cent of Quebecers would vote, or lean toward voting, to leave Canada in a referendum. Sixty-three per cent would vote or lean toward staying.

“There are many Quebecers, a significant segment of them, who do wake up with the dream of Quebec not just being a nation as recognized in Parliament, but a true sovereign nation,” said Shachi Kurl, president of Angus Reid Institute. 

“But for many other Quebecers, the relationship with Canada is one that’s basically, as long as this is a country that provides a good standard of living, and as long as their cultural and linguistic and other self-determinist needs are met, there are other things that Quebecers are focused on.”

That’s why political commentators call St-Pierre Plamondon’s decision tactically smart. By ruling out a referendum during Trump’s presidency, while still leaving open the prospect of one later, the PQ’s leader lowers the perceived risk for voters who may want a new provincial government without wanting to make an immediate choice on independence.

Now, a vote for the PQ is not necessarily a vote for a “Yes” coalition, Boily explained. Without the delay, he said, the party would have faced a more direct message from opposing parties that a vote for the PQ was a vote for independence.

Kurl also said deferring a referendum gives the PQ room to campaign as an alternative to the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government, rather than as a party preoccupied with sovereignty.

PQ is doing well largely because the other parties are not as popular, and because voters may be ready for change, according to Boily.

“The popularity of the PQ is the unpopularity of the CAQ,” he said.

Andrew Enns, Léger’s executive vice-president, said Léger’s federal polling suggests support for federalist parties in Quebec has risen during Trump’s second term. Liberal support in Quebec, for example, has increased from the mid-to-high 20s in 2024 to 44 per cent this month.

The rise in the Liberal vote means combined support for the Liberals, Conservatives and NDP amounts to well over 60 per cent of the electorate, “which was not always the case pre-Trump,” Enns said.

Provincially, the PQ remains at about 30 per cent in recent Léger polling, ahead of the Quebec Liberals. But the race remains fluid: only 47 per cent of decided voters said their choice was final.

Meanwhile, support for separation in Quebec has dropped in the second Trump era, Enns said. In October 2024, support was around 35-37 per cent; this year it has dropped to around 30 per cent.

But the polling, cautions Kurl, should not automatically be read as warmer feelings toward Canada.

“These findings are less about what they find in Canada and more about what the fear of the unknown … of the potential of Quebec standing on its own two feet with a president who’s been very open about wanting to annex what he considers to be smaller or weaker countries looming right south of the border,” Kurl said.

Political analysts agree, noting that Trump is not making Quebecers fall in love with federalism or Canada so much as he’s making Canada look like the safer protective structure against a coercive United States.

“We’ve never had a secession in a modern advanced industrial liberal democracy because it’s very hard to convince citizens to support that because it’s inherently risky compared to the status quo,” said André Lecours, a political scientist at the University of Ottawa who studies federalism and nationalism.

“With this Trump administration down south, the risk is amplified.”

Boily tends to agree.

“It’s not necessarily a new love story with Canada,” he said. “It’s more fear (of) Trump.”

Angus Reid data earlier this year found that 79 per cent of Quebecers believed the United States would use economic means to pressure an independent Quebec to join the country. 

But it’s not just economic pressure, said Kurl.

“The issue of separation (is) … very tightly tied to Donald Trump and annexation fears, whether it’s economic annexation, cultural annexation or actual annexation,” she said.

Fifty-one per cent in that poll also said they believed the United States could use military means to compel an independent Quebec to join the country. 

Still, the very fear that makes the delay electorally useful for the PQ may make a referendum harder to win later.

If the PQ wins on a change message rather than on an explicit mandate for sovereignty, it could govern without a clear popular mandate to hold a referendum. But holding and winning a referendum after Trump could be even tougher moving forward. 

St-Pierre Plamondon has tied the referendum to Trump’s tenure, but the president’s departure won’t necessarily stop the United States from being nationalist, protectionist and coercive in the future. 

It could be “JD Vance, maybe, or another Trumpist” who wins the presidency next, said Boily. “It’s a possibility to have another Trumpist presidency.”

Lecours also notes that by postponing the referendum, St-Pierre Plamondon’s decision reflects that the economic case for independence — one based on 1990s-style, low-friction continental trade, softer borders and a predictable Washington — is harder to make. 

The premise that Quebec could simply trade south if Canada objected to its sovereignty or politics is now harder to sell, laying bare that an independent Quebec would still have to make concessions and hold negotiations with Washington, Lecours explained.

“We’re not coming back to the 1990s even when Trump is gone,” he said.

“I think that’s going to make the PQ’s job in convincing Quebecers that an independent Quebec will not suffer economically — that the change won’t be so dramatic — more difficult.”

National Post