Quebec Liberal leader targets PQ referendum pledge on final day of election campaign

Quebec Liberal party Leader Charles Milliard speaks during a campaign stop in Quebec City, Saturday, Oct. 3, 2026. Milliard is flanked by local candidates Farnell Morrisset and Richard Bélanger. Quebecers are going to the polls for a provincial election on Oct. 5. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jacques Boissinot)

Quebec Liberal Leader Charles Milliard said he didn’t have many regrets on the eve of the provincial election, save the fact that he didn’t make himself the face of his party’s campaign earlier.

Milliard was not a familiar figure for Quebecers before running for Liberal leadership, which he won in February.

He has never held public office, but is now seeking to form a government.

Milliard said at a campaign stop on Sunday in St-Victor, Que., that his party had turned the tide since the first week of the campaign, when he was criticized for not having a picture of him on his party’s campaign bus — an image they added later.

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“I think people recognized the Charles Milliard that my friends and my colleagues know in the weeks that followed,” he said.

As a crowd of Liberal supporters milled around in a Quebec Liberal campaign office in Sherbrooke, Que., later in the day, François Lafortune, who lives in Montreal and teaches at Université de Sherbrooke, called Milliard a “wonderful discovery.”

“He has a Zen side — he’s a new kind of politician,” he said.

At the rally, Milliard appealed to the party faithful by zeroing in on the Parti Québécois pledge to hold a sovereignty.

“We’re going for the win on Monday. I’m convinced that this campaign isn’t over yet,” he told the crowd.

PQ Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon has promised to hold a referendum on sovereignty if his party forms a government, but has said this would be after U.S. President Donald Trump leaves the White House in 2029.

Milliard said he is leading the only party on the ballot that can be counted on to defend Canadian federalism.

As a result, he is urging Quebecers who want to stop the PQ from forming a government to vote strategically for the Liberals.

He suggested that the other parties, including the sovereigntist Québec solidaire, the Coalition Avenir Québec and the Quebec Conservatives, might be asked to support sovereignty, even though the latter two have said they are opposed to a referendum.

“I can tell you that there’s one party that Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon won’t be calling up: the Quebec Liberal party, because we are proudly federalist, and we’re not ashamed to say it,” said Milliard.

Sonia Jubinville, an educational therapist who lives in the Orford riding, said she voted “Yes” in the 1995 referendum, but that she no longer identifies with the movement.

“Historically, the Parti Québécois did align with my values, but I find they’ve radicalized in the last few years and don’t accept other people,” said Jubinville, a Liberal supporter at the rally in Sherbrooke.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 4, 2026.