The Assembly Writes the Question

The Parti Québécois won Quebec’s general election on Monday with 59 of the National Assembly’s 127 seats, five short of the 64 a majority requires. Élections Québec’s preliminary results, with all 20,704 polling stations counted, give the party 1,199,900 votes, or 28.02 per cent. The Quebec Liberal Party won 40 seats on 24.22 per cent, the Conservative Party of Quebec 19 on 20.67 per cent and Québec solidaire nine on 12.43 per cent. The Coalition Avenir Québec, in government since 2018, won none. Its 571,405 votes, 13.34 per cent, were more than Québec solidaire’s.

Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, who will become premier, campaigned on holding a third referendum on sovereignty. “I continue to dream and visualize that country,” he said in his victory speech, AP reported. “That dream will be realized one day.” He also said: “Quebecers elected the Parti Québécois asking it to work with the other parties, and I heard that message.” Whether the first statement can become a vote depends on the second. Under Quebec’s own law, a government cannot put a question to the electors by itself. The Assembly has to adopt it.

What the Referendum Act requires

Section 7 of the Referendum Act lets the government order a referendum in one of two ways: “(a) on a question approved by the National Assembly in accordance with sections 8 and 9, or (b) on a bill adopted by the National Assembly in accordance with section 10.” Section 8 sets out the route for a question. “On a motion of the Prime Minister,” the English text reads, using its term for the premier, “the National Assembly may adopt the text of a question which is to be the subject of a referendum.” The debate on that motion takes precedence over all other business except the debate on the opening speech of a session. Section 9 lets any member move amendments and sub-amendments, suspends the rule that a member may speak only once, and, after 35 hours of debate, requires the President of the Assembly to put the amendments and the main motion to a vote.

Both routes run through a vote of the Assembly, and on Monday’s count the Parti Québécois cannot carry that vote on its own seats. With Québec solidaire, which CBC News called “the only other sovereigntist party in the National Assembly”, it has 68. The Liberals and the Conservatives together have 59. The PQ “would now need the backing of Québec Solidaire” to push forward with a referendum, CBC wrote. AP described Québec solidaire as a party that “could hold the balance of power and potentially support the PQ on a referendum.” The Liberal leader, Charles Milliard, gave his party’s answer on Monday night. It would collaborate on many issues, he said, but “there is no way we will collaborate on a potential referendum”, the BBC reported.

A timetable in the statute

The Act also fixes what happens after a question is adopted. Under section 14, no writ instituting a referendum may be issued before the eighteenth day after the Assembly was informed of the question. Section 12 allows only one referendum on the same subject, or on a subject the Conseil du référendum considers substantially similar, during a single Legislature. Section 15 ends a referendum when an election is called: “From the time a writ instituting the holding of a general election is issued, every writ instituting the holding of a referendum ceases to have effect”, and no new writ may be issued until the general election has been held.

St-Pierre Plamondon has said there will be no vote while Donald Trump is in the White House. The BBC reported that he wants “conditions that allow for an informed and serene debate”, and CBC News that he would delay a referendum until 2029 or 2030. CBC also noted that “minority governments in Quebec typically last less than two years.” Its analysis of the result described the incoming government as on “a short leash.” The PQ’s own costed platform puts the price of a referendum at $130 million, CBC reported.

What a result would have to show

Quebec has legislated the threshold as well as the procedure. Section 4 of the Act respecting the exercise of the fundamental rights and prerogatives of the Québec people and the Québec State, passed in 2000, says that in a referendum held under the Referendum Act “the winning option is the option that obtains a majority of the valid votes cast, namely 50% of the valid votes cast plus one.”

The federal Clarity Act, passed the same year, sets different tests and gives them to the House of Commons. Within 30 days of a province tabling or otherwise officially releasing a question on secession, the Commons must decide by resolution whether the question is clear. A clear expression of will, the Act says, could not result from a question that “merely focuses on a mandate to negotiate”, or from one that envisages “other possibilities in addition to the secession of the province from Canada, such as economic or political arrangements with Canada”. After a vote, before Ottawa may negotiate, the Commons must weigh “the size of the majority of valid votes cast in favour of the secessionist option” and “the percentage of eligible voters voting in the referendum”. Both were passed in 2000, five years after the last referendum. Neither has yet been applied to one.

Quebec has voted on sovereignty twice, in 1980 and 1995, and rejected it both times. In 1995 50.58 per cent voted to stay in Canada, DW noted. Support for independence is about 30 per cent, “near record lows”, the Guardian reported.

A government on 28 per cent

The seat count is itself a product of the voting system. CBC called the PQ’s share “the lowest voter share to achieve that in Quebec’s history”, meaning to form a government. The same arithmetic left the CAQ with no seats for 13.34 per cent of the vote and gave Québec solidaire nine for 12.43. The closest riding was Vachon, where the preliminary count gives the Liberal Affine Lwalalika 10,064 votes and the PQ’s Stephan Fogaing 10,050, a margin of 14. Élections Québec says results become official after the addition of the votes, which in most electoral divisions takes place the day after the election. During the campaign St-Pierre Plamondon, the Conservatives and Québec solidaire all promised to overhaul the voting system, CBC reported.

The outgoing premier, Christine Fréchette, lost her own seat in Trois-Rivières to the PQ’s Jean Pellerin, 10,107 votes to 9,608. The prime minister, Mark Carney, congratulated St-Pierre Plamondon. “Building a stronger Québec is core to our mission of building a stronger Canada,” he said, as AP reported it. Alberta votes on 19 October on whether to hold a referendum of its own on separation, the Guardian and AP reported.

St-Pierre Plamondon now has the seats to form a government and, under section 8, the power to move a question. Whether one is put to Quebecers is for 127 members to decide, and 59 of them are his.

Sources

Seat counts, votes, percentages and the Vachon and Trois-Rivières figures are from Élections Québec’s preliminary results data, read at midday on 6 October with all polling stations reporting; the official addition of the votes was not complete when this was written, and figures may change slightly. Sections 7 to 15 of the Referendum Act (chapter C-64.1) and section 4 of chapter E-20.2 were read in English on LegisQuébec, and sections 1 and 2 of the Clarity Act (S.C. 2000, c. 26) on the Justice Laws website. St-Pierre Plamondon’s remarks, Carney’s statement and the description of Québec solidaire are from AP’s report as carried by Newsday; Milliard’s remark and the “serene debate” condition from the BBC; the timetable, the length of minority governments, the reform pledges, the vote-share record and the referendum’s cost from CBC News; the 1995 figure from DW; current support, the CAQ’s years in office and the Alberta date from the Guardian, which also carried AP and Reuters copy. Québec solidaire’s position on a referendum motion was not found in any report read.