The separatist Parti Québécois (PQ) has won the most seats in Quebec's provincial election and will form the next government in Canada's predominantly French-speaking province, according to media reports.
Monday's result has revived the question of whether Quebec should leave Canada, testing Prime Minister Mark Carney's message of national unity.
Party leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon is expected to become provincial premier. During the campaign, he promised to hold a third referendum on leaving Canada during his first term, but said he would wait until U.S. President Donald Trump leaves office in January 2029.
It was not yet clear whether the party had reached the 64 seats needed for a majority in the 127-seat legislature. Without a majority, the PQ would lead a minority government and would need opposition support to pass key legislation and survive confidence votes.
The Parti Québécois previously governed the province from 2012 to 2014. Monday's victory marks a strong comeback for the PQ, which won only three seats in the 2022 provincial election. The return also ends eight years of rule by the Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ), a centre-right nationalist party in Quebec that does not support independence.
Daniel Beland, a political science professor at McGill University in Montreal, told the Associated Press that the win reflects Quebec's multi-party system, in which support is split among several parties, rather than a wave of rising separatist sentiment. He said support for independence remains at around 30 percent, low by historical standards.
However, Beland said, a separatist government in Quebec creates a new challenge to national unity for Prime Minister Carney, especially with an independence-related vote approaching in Alberta. "A pro-independence party winning in Quebec just under two weeks before an independence-related referendum takes place in Alberta could suggest to the Trump administration that national unity remains a major issue in Canada despite Mark Carney's popularity," Beland said.
Quebec has held two previous referendums on independence, in 1980 and 1995, and voters rejected secession both times. The second vote was close, but three decades have passed without another referendum.
