Parti Quebecois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon questions the government at the legislature in Quebec City on May 6. Mr. Plamondon’s suspicions are rooted in a bygone era, writes Konrad Yakabuski.Jacques Boissinot/The Canadian Press
Parti Québécois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon’s disclosure this week that he and his fellow PQ caucus members suspect they are being spied on by unnamed federal authorities sparked mostly disbelief and even ridicule in Quebec political circles.
Independent federal MP Alexandre Boulerice, who last month quit the NDP caucus to run for the far-left Québec solidaire in the October provincial election, quipped on Bluesky: “The good news is that I am sure there is a treatment for that.”
He later apologized for making a “clumsy” remark about a serious topic – mental health – but added that “it is always imprudent to make allegations without any facts or proof.”
The absence of hard evidence does not in itself invalidate the PQ Leader’s concerns. But his suspicions are likely misplaced. The illicit threat that separatist movements in Quebec and Alberta should be most concerned about is foreign interference.
The likelihood that foreign governments have sought or will seek to exploit secessionist sentiment in Canada’s most restless provinces is higher than ever. Indeed, one recent study found evidence of disinformation campaigns originating in China and Russia and targeting Albertans.
Parti Québécois Leader alleges Ottawa is spying on separatist movement without offering proof
Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon, who is commonly referred to in Quebec by his initials, PSPP, made his bombshell declaration in response to a journalist’s question about Prime Minister Mark Carney’s recent insistence that any referendum on Alberta separation respect the Clarity Act, the federal law adopted in 2000 that sets out the rules for separation.
The act empowers the House of Commons to determine what level of support constitutes a “clear majority” in a provincial sovereignty referendum. Under the act, only if such a plebiscite clears that bar would the federal government be bound to undertake negotiations on secession.
Former PQ premier Lucien Bouchard’s government adopted legislation that sets the threshold for successful sovereignty referendum at 50 per cent plus one, rather than the supermajority that is implied in the federal Clarity Act. Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon insisted that a future PQ government will follow the Quebec law, not the federal one.
He did not stop there. He went on to charge that Ottawa has always abused its powers to prevent Quebec’s emergence as a country, including through illegal espionage, and so he felt “obliged to assume” the PQ is being spied on now.
“We know our history, so we know that, in every decade, the government of Canada has conducted ethically and legally doubtful surveillance on Parti Québécois elected officials,” he told reporters. “We work telling ourselves that it is very possible that is the case [now], but we will never have the means, at least not in the short term, to investigate that.”
Except that, it is precisely because the RCMP’s spying on the PQ created such a scandal in the past that Ottawa was forced to make sure it could never happen again.
The 1984 creation of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service was the direct result of a Royal Commission on illicit RCMP activities, including those involving the PQ.
The RCMP began spying on Quebec separatists long before the 1970 October Crisis, when Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) terrorists kidnapped and murdered Liberal MNA Pierre Laporte. The question of whether members of Liberal prime minister Pierre Trudeau’s government were aware of or even ordered RCMP spying on the PQ has never been fully settled.
The 1977 admission by then-federal solicitor-general Francis Fox that the RCMP had broken into the offices of a Montreal computer company in 1973 to steal a list of PQ members shed light on the political surveillance activities conducted by the national police service, as did the 1992 revelation that former PQ cabinet minister Claude Morin had for years been a paid RCMP informant.
As the head of the RCMP’s now-defunct security service told the Royal Commission, as detailed in its 1981 report : “[T]here is no doubt that if the government had not wished to have separatism dealt with by the Security Service in the way in which they dealt with it, there is no question that the Security Service would not have done it, in its wildest dreams, there is no way the Security Service on its own would undertake that kind of investigation.”
Since the creation of a dedicated federal spy service four decades ago, the law explicitly prohibits CSIS from “investigating lawful advocacy, protest or dissent, except when it is carried out in conjunction with activities that constitute a threat to the security of Canada.”
Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon’s suspicions are hence rooted in a bygone era when the RCMP’s “dirty tricks” were directed against the PQ.
Still, his professed fears of being spied on now do make for juicy headlines that might just help generate sympathy for his cause, n’est-ce pas?