Paul St-Pierre Plamondon (; born February 17, 1977), also known by his initials PSPP, is a Canadian politician, lawyer, and media personality who is the premier-designate of Quebec. He has served as the leader of the Parti Québécois since 2020. He represents the electoral district of Camille-Laurin in the National Assembly of Quebec.
On October 5, 2026, St-Pierre Plamondon led his party to victory in the 2026 Quebec election. He is set to become the 34th premier of Quebec later in 2026.
Early life and education St-Pierre Plamondon was born on February 17, 1977, to Louise St-Pierre and Jacques Plamondon, former director general of the Quebec Table Tennis Federation. His grandfather, Paul-Henri Plamondon, was president of the Quebec City Chamber of Commerce.
St-Pierre Plamondon began his college studies at Collège André-Grasset and graduated in 1997. He holds bachelor's degrees in Civil Law (BCL) and Common Law (LLB) from McGill University (2001), an MBA from Nuffield College, Oxford (2006), and a Certificate in International Law from Lund University (2001).https://www.ctvnews.ca/montreal/article/paul-st-pierre-plamondon-says-he-encountered-his-most-hostile-audience-by-far-in-england/
In 2003, he was a volunteer prosecutor for the Permanent Assembly of Human Rights in Sucre, Bolivia. In 2005, he worked with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Belgium. St-Pierre Plamondon was also a lawyer in the litigation department of Stikeman Elliott, a national law firm.
In 2009, he joined the Delegatus law firm as vice-president and shareholder of the study.La Presse (http://affaires.lapresse.ca/dossiers/affaires-juridiques/200904/16/01-847004-paul-st-pierre-plamondon-chez-delegatus.php ), consulted on December 28, 2012 Recognized for his social involvement, St-Pierre Plamondon was awarded the title of Lawyer of the Year in 2010, in the pro bono category, at the annual conference of the Young Bar of Montreal to celebrate the "leaders of tomorrow".
Early career In 2007, he co-founded Génération d'idées, a nonprofit thinking group whose mission is to engage young people from 20 to 35 in public debate by inviting them to express themselves on social themes in the various platforms of Génération d'idées. In 2009, with the aim of promoting Génération d'idées and to sound out the opinion of Québec's Generation Y, St-Pierre Plamondon visited 19 Québec cities in 63 days and gathered the thoughts of 500 young people. Following that exercise, he published the essay Des jeunes et l'avenir du Québec: les rêveries d'un promeneur solitaire.
In 2011, he began as co-host of the radio show Génératrice on Radio-Canada’s Première Chaîne. In October 2011, the Génération d’idées group planted more than 250 brooms in front of the National Assembly in Québec City and stepped up public interventions to call for a public inquiry into the construction industry in Québec. Plamondon's interventions in favour of this commission of inquiry led Radio-Canada to request that he be removed from the program as a co-host.
In 2012, he defended students on walkout in front of the courts and participated in the demonstration of lawyers against Bill 78 (now Bill 12). In September 2013, he resigned as president of Génération d’idées. In February 2014, St-Pierre Plamondon became a journalist for Les Affaires newspaper.
In October 2014, he published a second essay entitled Les Orphelins politiques: plaidoyer pour un renouveau du paysage politique québécois, in which he advocated for the emergence of a new movement that would fill the void felt by several political orphans. He is the author of several open letters and media interventions on various current issues, including politics.
Political career Political beginnings In 2016, St-Pierre Plamondon was thinking of creating a new centre-left, nationalist but not separatist political party, but a friend suggested that he run for the PQ in order to use it as a vehicle for his political career. St-Pierre Plamondon was a candidate in the 2016 Parti Québécois leadership race, finishing fourth with 6.84% support. One of his main commitments during this race was to reconnect the party with all Québécois people. St-Pierre Plamondon opposed holding a referendum on sovereignty during a PQ government's first mandate. After months following his bid, he publicly clashed with conservative sovereigntist Mathieu Bock-Côté on whether systemic racism was a longstanding issue in Quebec.
On October 23, 2016, the leader of the Parti Québécois (PQ), Jean-François Lisée, announced the appointment of St-Pierre Plamondon to the position of special advisor to the leader. In this role, St-Pierre Plamondon recommended consulting the people of Québec on the revival of the party and drafting, at the end of this process, a report and recommendations on the relaunch of the PQ. The open consultation was mostly aimed at the business community, particularly entrepreneurs and other professionals, members of Québec's minority groups, and those under the age of 40. After 162 consultations with more than 3,600 people, he tabled a report with 156 recommendations in April 2017. Within the report, it stated a "refocus on an inclusive nationalism," and to "redefine nationalism to distance it from populism and intolerance." At the PQ National Congress in September 2017, 44 recommendations were accepted by the PQ National Executive Council. The majority of the other recommendations were adopted at the extraordinary PQ convention in Trois-Rivières in November 2019.
As the candidate for the Parti Québécois in the Prévost in the 2018 Quebec general election, St-Pierre Plamondon faced former Quebec Liberal Party minister Marguerite Blais, who now represented the Coalition Avenir Québec. During this local election campaign, St-Pierre Plamondon prioritized the environment, the quality of public services and support for families. Presented as a star candidate, he was defeated by Marguerite Blais.
Leader of the Parti Québécois (2020–present) 42nd Quebec Legislature (2020–2022) On January 28, 2020, he officially announced his candidacy for the leadership of the Parti Québécois. He won the leadership race on October 9, 2020, with 56% of the vote in the third round. St-Pierre Plamondon this time unlike in 2016, pledged to hold a sovereignty referendum in the first mandate of a PQ government.
In early 2022, he announced that he would be a candidate in the riding of Camille-Laurin, in Montreal. On election night, he defeated Coalition Avenir Québec MNA Richard Campeau, aided by the lack of a Québec solidaire candidate in the riding.
During the 2022 Quebec general election, he and Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois from Québec solidaire faced some controversy for their use of the word nègre while they discussed academic freedom in schools and universities during a televised debate. The 2022 provincial election saw even further erosion and an unprecedented loss of support for the Parti Québécois. Not only did the party once again not form government or the official opposition, but it was reduced to its smallest-ever presence in the legislature, with only three seats won. The previous low was its second election, in 1973, where the party won six seats. The PQ lost its official party status and came in a distant fourth place. It won only 14 percent of the vote, its lowest ever. The movement of most voter support over to the CAQ and other nationalist parties put into question the party's relevance and its ability to survive in future.
43rd Quebec Legislature (2022–2026) Plamondon and the PQ said after the general election in 2022 that they would not take the Oath of Allegiance upon attempting to take their seats in the National Assembly of Quebec, arguing, "you can't serve two masters at the same time." In response, the President of the National Assembly, François Paradis, asserted that the PQ MNAs were required to recite the oath or risk expulsion from the legislature. On 1 December 2022, PQ MNAs continued to refuse and were stopped from entering the legislature. The Executive Council, occupied by the party, headed by François Legault, thereafter tabled a bill that purported to amend the constitution of Canada so as to add to Section 128 of the Constitution Act, 1867, the clause requiring the Oath of Allegiance for legislators, a statement that the section does not apply to Quebec. That bill passed the assembly with unanimous consent on 6 December 2022. It remains, unclear if the law has any effect.
After the 2022 provincial election, the PQ held a leadership confidence vote in March 2023. St-Pierre Plamondon broke the record for the PQ votes of confidence, with 98.51% support. After the 2022 election, St-Pierre Plamondon shifted the PQ rightward, away from the progressive legacy of Premiers René Lévesque, Jacques Parizeau, Lucien Bouchard and Pauline Marois. The PQ started to see an increase in its support in the polls, polling as the second-largest party but still behind the CAQ. On October 2, 2023, the PQ won its fourth seat with its win in the 2023 Jean-Talon provincial by-election, with Pascal Paradis being elected MNA. Since November 2023, the PQ has been polling as the largest party, with support over 30%. Their polling has reportedly been affected by the 2025 United States trade war with Canada and Mexico.
Plamondon has been described as scapegoating immigrants for problems caused by the Quebec government, in contrast to former PQ immigration minister Gerald Godin, who saw immigrants as the future of Quebec's sovereigntist movement. In 2024, St-Pierre Plamondon called for a referendum on immigration. He also agreed with American president Donald Trump's comment that immigrants from Canada were bringing fentanyl into the US. On September 11, 2025, a letter was published in La Presse, which included former PQ cabinet minister Louise Harel as one of the signatories, as a response to an advertisement that the PQ put out on immigration, stating it is a complex topic and the public should not be misled on it. Plamondon called the letter a form of intimidation and referred to the signatories as part of the radical left.
Plamondon was also critical of former Quebec City mayor Régis Labeaume, who wrote in La Presse that he was using inflammatory rhetoric to win over the “white francophone” vote, by demanding that La Presse give him a column so that he can refute what he saw as the “defamatory allegations", which the paper rejected. Former Montreal Gazette journalist Christopher Curtis revealed that during the 2020 leadership race, St-Pierre Plamondon called Curtis, who never gave out his phone number, and demanded that he take down a tweet comparing Plamondon's immigration views to the French far-right. In June 2026, St-Pierre Plamondon told the Montreal Chamber of Commerce that he would never scapegoat immigrants for decisions made by policymakers. During an interview with Le Devoir, during the 2026 Quebec Election, he blamed the media and his political opponents for the deterioration of his image among immigrants.
On November 28, 2024, it was reported by Noovo Info that members of the sovereigntist identarian group Nouveau alliance were participating in the meetings of the PQ and the Bloc Québécois. St-Pierre Plamondon stated that his party welcomed those in the far-right and far-left as long as they respect their code of ethics.