Peladeau offers tepid support for Bloc Quebecois at weekend rally for leader

Mario Beaulieu and Pierre Karl Peladeau said they plan to stand united on sovereignty.

New PQ leader Pierre Karl Peladeau offered tepid support to his party's fast-fading federal cousins at a Bloc Quebeois meeting in Montreal East Sunday.

Peladeau left the meeting - which marked the kickoff of leader Mario Beaulieu's campaign in the Pointe de l'Ile riding - early. He did not address the audience and was vague in his party's committment to the BQ, a party to which the PQ was once joined at the hip.

When asked by CTV Montreal whether he supported Beaulieu's leadership, Peladeau remained vague. "From the PQ point of view there's no interference but there's also no indifference also," he said. Peladeau had previously called the Bloc Quebecois "irrelevant." He later backtracked on the comment.

"Both parties are going to work together. We share the same objectives," said Peladeau Sunday.

Former Quebec premier Bernard Landry, PQ MNAs Maka Kotto and Nicole Léger and veteran Bloc MP Louis Plamondon were all on hand to support the BQ. Beaulieu took the opportunity to appeal to separatists for mobilization.

Beaulieu is running for the first time in the riding long represented by the late Bloc MP Francine Lalonde, who held the seat from 1993 to 2010. She died of cancer last year. The riding fell to the NDP in the last election, when MP Ève Péclet wrangled more than 48 per cent of the vote. The Bloc dropped from 49 to just four seats in the 2011 election.

On Friday a new poll pegged the BQ at 13 percent, which put the once-powerful party well behind the NDP, Liberals and Conservatives.