PQ demands funding, question period despite winning just three seats

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Parties sitting in the National Assembly must agree to provide budget funds and a question period to the Parti Québécois despite the fact that it won only three of the 125 seats in the provincial legislature, PQ leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon said on Tuesday. .

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To do otherwise would be to ignore that the party won nearly 15 percent of the popular vote in Monday’s general election, he said.

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St-Pierre Plamondon’s comments come as a growing number of Quebecers are becoming aware of the “electoral distortion” created by Quebec’s (and Canada’s) simple majority voting system. The PQ finished with three seats and won 14.6 percent of the vote, while the Quebec Liberals became the official opposition with 21 seats despite winning 14.3 percent. The apparent anomaly is explained by the dispersion of the PQ vote, while that of the Liberals is concentrated in the Montreal area.

St-Pierre Plamondon said that while he disagreed with virtually every element of Éric Duhaime’s Conservative Party of Quebec platform, it also deserves to be heard in the National Assembly, as it won nearly 13 percent of the vote, but not one. seat.

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The PQ leader pointed out that the electoral reform necessary to transform the system into one of proportional representation has not been favored in the past by either the Coalition Avenir Québec, which won 90 seats with just under 41 percent of the popular vote, nor by the liberals. . But, he added, that change is desired by the public and continuing to avoid the issue would be an “attack on democracy.”

“A party that received more than 10 percent support must be heard in the National Assembly,” he said.