Quebec’s incoming premier, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, says that a growing economy does not automatically make ordinary residents richer, and he is pointing to high immigration levels as a driver of falling wages.
St-Pierre Plamondon leads the separatist Parti Québécois, which swept Monday’s provincial election, wiping out the governing Coalition Avenir Québec. The CAQ entered the vote holding 79 seats and left with zero. The PQ’s roughly 59 seats give St-Pierre Plamondon dominant control of Quebec’s National Assembly, though the party fell short of the 64 seats needed to govern alone.
His campaign centered on opposition to high immigration levels, framed around a specific economic argument: that measuring prosperity by overall GDP growth misleads the public.
That argument takes direct aim at the Century Initiative, a corporate-backed nonprofit that advocates for Canada reaching a population of 100 million by 2100 through significantly higher immigration. In a video clip circulating on social media platform X, St-Pierre Plamondon rejected the group’s underlying premise.
“That Century Initiative is wrong,” he said. “It’s based on the very stupid assumption that growing the GDP makes you richer.”
The reasoning behind his position: a larger population expands the overall size of the economy, but it also expands the labor pool. When workers become more plentiful, the price of labor tends to fall, pushing wages down. Under that logic, immigration-driven growth can raise the headline GDP figure while eroding living standards for people already living in the province.
This is not a new position for St-Pierre Plamondon. In November 2023, he questioned the federal government’s target of admitting 500,000 newcomers a year, drawing criticism from a Québec solidaire lawmaker and then-federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller, who called his comments “opportunistic.” He did not retreat from the stance. “If giving Quebecers the straight story and denouncing absolutely irresponsible federal immigration policies is opportunistic, well, I’ll keep being opportunistic,” he said at the time.
What the PQ platform proposes
The Parti Québécois platform calls for sharp reductions in immigration, including a moratorium on new economic immigrants. Instead, the party proposes drawing permanent residents from the pool of temporary foreign workers and international students already living in Quebec. To address labor shortages, the plan relies on automation rather than new arrivals from abroad.
The CAQ’s collapse was steep: the party went from 79 seats to none, and leader Christine Fréchette lost her own seat in Trois-Rivières.
Federal response
A day after the election, Prime Minister Mark Carney urged Quebec to set aside talk of a referendum and focus instead on the economy, housing, growth, and workers affected by U.S. tariffs — the same economy St-Pierre Plamondon argues is being measured dishonestly.
Carney’s Quebec lieutenant, Joël Lightbound, said the election result does not change the sovereignty question. “A mandate for separation needs to go through a referendum,” he said.
St-Pierre Plamondon has promised a third independence referendum during his term but said he would wait until U.S. President Donald Trump leaves office. Support for Quebec sovereignty currently sits at about 30 percent, low by historical standards.
Separately, Albertans are scheduled to vote October 19 on whether to hold their own separation referendum.
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