From ‘political orphan’ to probable premier, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon is going 'all-in' on separatism - National Post
Parti Québécois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon arrives at Maison de Radio-Canada for the third and final debate during the Quebec election campaign in Montreal on Wednesday, September 23, 2026. Photo by Evan Buhler /Montreal GazetteArticle contentQUEBEC CITY — “To the sovereigntists, I say this: your obsession with holding and winning a referendum harms the progressive cause and feels like psychological harassment to a majority of the population. Many voters share my view.”
These words may seem like they would come out of the mouth of a federalist politician in Quebec, but they were written by Parti Québécois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon in his book Les Orphelins politiques (The Political Orphans) published in 2014.
Twelve years later, St-Pierre Plamondon has become the leader of the sovereignty movement in Quebec, promising to hold the referendum that he once deplored.
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Should he become premier on Oct. 5, that is exactly what he plans to do, according to current and former PQ colleagues and even one of his detractors.
St-Pierre Plamondon has pulled off a stunning political metamorphosis. He claims to have voted “Yes” in the 1995 referendum when he turned 18 but decamped to federalist circles when he attended law school at McGill University and when he was a young lawyer.
In fact, the PQ leader was friends with Sacha Trudeau and even attended his wedding in 2009. St-Pierre Plamondon also co-founded Génération d’idées, a think tank dedicated to young people aged 20 to 35, with now Industry Minister Mélanie Joly.
St-Pierre Plamondon also donated $2,300 to the Liberal Party of Canada between 2004 and 2008, when working as a junior lawyer at the Montreal firm Stikeman Elliott.
Asked by National Post if he was once a federalist, the PQ leader replied: “Yes, I guess you can say that.”
But he added it is not an anomaly for leaders of the sovereigntist party to have a change of heart. PQ founder René Lévesque was once a federalist, as was Jacques Parizeau, he said. Both men still ended up becoming the face of the 1980 and 1995 referendums.
“Our greatest leaders have all been (federalists),” said Claude Villeneuve, a former speechwriter for the last PQ premier, Pauline Marois, and who is now running as a candidate for St-Pierre Plamondon’s team in Quebec City.
