Trump hails Quebec separatists’ minority win as tensions test Carney

The Quebec election victory Donald Trump celebrated has brought a pro-independence minority government to power, creating a genuine new political challenge for Canadian prime minister Mark Carney. But the result was not a referendum on leaving Canada, and it does not by itself show that Ottawa’s position in its tariff dispute with Washington has weakened.

“Congratulations to Paul St-Pierre Plamondon on his WIN!” Trump wrote on Truth Social on 27 October 2026, 22 days after the provincial election.

He also shared the headline “Separatists win Quebec provincial election in blow to Mark Carney”, from a Reuters report published by The Irish Times on 6 October. The article was more conditional than its headline: it said the result could make it tougher for Carney to maintain national unity against Trump, and acknowledged that the Parti Québécois (PQ) had fallen short of a majority.

The scale of the victory

Élections Québec’s results give the PQ 60 of the National Assembly’s 127 seats, with 28.02 per cent of the vote. That leaves it four seats short of the 64 needed for a majority.

The article Trump shared had reported a provisional 59 seats. A judicial recount in Vachon, announced on 21 October, flipped the seat to the PQ by three votes. The new provincial cabinet was formed on the same day, six days before Trump’s congratulations.

The defeated government was Quebec’s Coalition Avenir Québec, which had been in office since 2018. This was a provincial change of power, not a contest for Carney’s federal government.

Daniel Béland, a political scientist at McGill University, told the Associated Press that the election was principally a rejection of the CAQ rather than a vote about independence. He suggested the PQ’s minority status could help Carney by making an independence referendum harder to prepare and call.

St-Pierre Plamondon said during the election campaign that he would wait until Trump leaves office before holding another referendum. The National Assembly would have to approve it, requiring opposition support. Minority status does not make such a vote impossible: AP identified Québec solidaire, another pro-independence party, as a potential source of support.

Cooperation and confrontation

St-Pierre Plamondon also offered cooperation in his 5 October victory speech. According to CityNews, he told Carney he was ready for dialogue and collaboration whenever the federal government defended Quebec’s interests. Carney’s own post-election congratulations called for joint work to support businesses and workers affected by US tariffs, among other priorities.

An early dispute has nevertheless emerged. On 27 October, The Canadian Press reported that the new PQ government accused Ottawa of silencing it by denying St-Pierre Plamondon a speaking role at the Canada–EU summit scheduled for 29–30 October in Montreal.

Industry minister Mélanie Joly defended the federal character of the gathering, saying geopolitics fell within federal jurisdiction.

Trump’s congratulations also came as he and Carney offered competing accounts of trade negotiations. CityNews reported Trump saying the trade war could end “pretty soon” and that Canada was “willing to give us anything at this moment”. Carney said on 26 October that progress reflected the fact that “the U.S. is coming closer to our position”.

Trump’s Quebec message did not explain its timing. Agence QMI also reported that he had congratulated a Conservative provincial election victory in British Columbia; the Quebec post alone does not establish a strategy behind the congratulations.

The early clash with Ottawa gives the shared headline a concrete political basis: Carney must now work with a premier committed to Quebec independence. Yet the minority result and both leaders’ offers of cooperation leave open whether that challenge will weaken the united front Carney wants against US tariffs.