There is anxiety and tension within the Indo-Canadian community in the Francophone province of Quebec as a separatist party, promising an independence referendum, looks poised to emerge victorious in the provincial election on Monday.
We don’t want any separation, we want to be part of Canada. Parti Québécois led by Paul St-Pierre Plamondon is close to a potential majority in the provincial Assembly even as the vote takes places on Monday, according to poll aggregator 338 Canada. Among its principal planks is holding a referendum for an independent Quebec after US President Donald Trump has demitted office in January 2029. The party, which forms the government after Monday’s vote, will have a four-year term, extending till October 2030. The PQ garnered just three seats in the 127-member Assembly in 2022, but its fortunes have changed since then. Quebec has a population of between 100,000 and 125,000 Indo-Canadians.
That sentiment was echoed by Gurinder Johal, a resident of the township of Hudson, as he said, “The worry is about the referendum. Johal, who has been volunteering for the provincial Liberal Party during the election, said division within communities could get “worse” if the PQ were to come to power, displacing the ruling Coalition Avenir Québec or CAQ, which has been power since 2018. Ambica Sharma, presenter with the Montreal-based Radio Humsafar, said the community will never support a party like PQ which has a separatist agenda and will largely back the provincial Liberals. “They would never support anything like that (separation),” she said. However, she felt with this provincial election, there was a “different kind of climate” with the parties for Canadian unity, trailing the PQ.
