Federal Industry Minister Mélanie Joly is concerned to hear the PQ leader advocate for “closer ties” with the United States if Quebec were to become an independent country.
According to her, “the leader of the Parti Québécois (PQ) wants to give Quebec to Donald Trump, to throw it into the arms” of the American president.
“He wants to ensure that Quebec is much weaker in the face of an America that is acquiring enormous power and wants to make its own laws around the world,” said Joly, on the sidelines of a cabinet meeting Tuesday morning.
For the past few weeks, the Parti Québécois leader, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, has been gradually revealing the contents of his ‘Blue Book’ on a sovereign Quebec. At the beginning of the month, he presented a summary of a section dealing with international relations.
St-Pierre Plamondon said that Quebec has every interest in having “direct and constructive” relations with the United States, even in the current context of instability. According to him, Canada is no longer a “shield,” but a “cacophony.”
“We have an interest in speaking with our own voice, and in having a diplomacy in Washington. A diplomacy that will be less arrogant and much more down-to-earth than Canada’s diplomacy in recent years,” he argued at a press conference.
The sovereigntist leader also plans to tour the United States in early 2026.
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This “greater rapprochement” that the PQ desires with our Southern neighbours “is extremely worrying” for Minister Joly. “At the very moment when Canadian sovereignty, in general, is being undermined by the United States,” adds the Liberal Minister.
Reacting to the minister’s comments, PQ MNA Alex Boissonneault asserts that “the only person who is handing Quebec over to Donald Trump is Mark Carney and the Liberal Party of Canada.”
According to him, the Liberal Party has “abandoned Quebec’s interests” and its electoral promises related to negotiations with Trump.
“Where are the counter-tariffs promised during the campaign, before finally backing down without obtaining any guarantees? And why this silence on Quebec wood, when we hear you very well defending the economic interests of other provinces?” he wrote on the social network X.
Joly also attacked the sovereigntist party’s idea of creating a Quebec currency, following a Yes victory in a referendum on sovereignty.
Joly believes that Quebecers will see their purchasing power reduced if such a scenario were to materialize.
“We know that any currency is based on the size of the economy. And the size of the Quebec economy, although important, is still much smaller than that of Canada,” argued the minister, who said her objective was “to ensure that Quebec has more powers” and “a better economy.”
The leader of the Bloc Québécois, Yves-François Blanchet, believes that Joly “may have given a cursory and hostile reading” of the PQ’s proposals. He suggested that the minister is playing on fear.
“When you put what she said about Quebec’s ability to one day have its own currency, and Donald Trump, in the same sentence, you’re taking a big risk. Because the strategy of fear is Mr. Trump’s strategy to date, and it’s working,” Blanchet told parliamentary reporters.
Although it favours a Quebec currency, the PQ would establish an independent commission to make its own recommendations after Quebec becomes a country. This commission might therefore not recommend the creation of a Quebec currency.
–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews
