The Free Press · October 6, 2026

Separatist party returns to power in Quebec

• The Parti Québécois won 59 of 127 seats in Quebec's provincial legislature, per late-Monday vote results from Élections Québec.
• The governing Coalition Avenir Québec, in power for eight years, was defeated.
• In the 2022 election the Parti Québécois won 3 seats.
• In Quebec's 1995 sovereignty referendum, the separatist side lost by 54,288 votes out of nearly 4.8 million cast.
• Party leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon voted for sovereignty at age 18; he later worked as an Air Canada flight attendant, graduated from McGill and Oxford, practiced corporate law, and donated to the federal Liberal Party before returning to the sovereignty movement.

Vote figures via Élections Québec, cited in the original report.