魁北克省的选民即将参加省级选举，预计将有一党获胜，该党承诺在未来两年内就脱离加拿大独立举行公投。
Voters in Quebec are going to the polls in provincial elections which will probably result in victory for a party that has promised to hold a referendum on independence from Canada within the next two years.
如果民调准确，魁北克党（PQ）将组建这个拥有约九百万人口的省份的政府，这将是分离主义运动十多年来首次在这个法语地区掌权。
If polls are correct, the Parti Québécois (PQ) will form the government of the province of roughly nine million, the first time that the separatist movement will have gained power in the French-speaking region for more than a decade.
魁北克党在周一的选举中获胜，也很可能引发魁北克与联邦政府之间围绕语言和身份认同问题的激烈交锋。
A PQ victory in Monday’s election would also be likely to trigger a return to pitched battles over questions of language and identity between Quebec and the federal government.
魁北克党长期以来被视为魁北克政坛上的一股衰落力量，其复兴归功于党魁保罗·圣皮埃尔·普拉蒙东。这位49岁的牛津大学毕业生、律师兼多语种使用者，将自己定位为千禧一代对魁北克省长弗朗索瓦·勒戈的回应，勒戈今年早些时候提前辞职。
Long considered a declining force in Quebec politics, the PQ owes its resurgence to party leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon. The 49-year-old Oxford-educated lawyer and polyglot has positioned himself as a TikToking gen-X rebuttal to François Legault, Quebec’s long-serving Premier until he resigned early this year.
分析人士指出，圣皮埃尔·普拉蒙东的选举成功并非因为他是一名分离主义者——大多数选民并不支持魁北克独立——而是因为他对核心身份认同问题持右翼立场。
Analysts say that St-Pierre Plamondon’s electoral success is not because he is a separatist – the majority of voters do not support an independent Quebec – but because of his rightwing take on red-meat identity issues.
他将魁北克学校人满为患、犯罪率上升和房价飙升归咎于移民，同时承诺削减移民规模，并禁止教师及其学生佩戴“显眼”的宗教符号。他蔑称来自左翼魁北克团结党的批评者为“觉醒者”，并开始重复极右翼专栏作家的论点。
He has blamed immigrants for Quebec’s overflowing schools, increased crime and skyrocketing housing prices, while promising to slash immigration levels and ban “conspicuous” religious symbols from the bodies of teachers and their students. He has derided his critics from the leftist Quebec Solidaire party as “woke”, and has taken to repeating the talking points of hard-right columnists.
据电台主持人帕特里克·拉加塞称，该省许多人同意圣皮埃尔·普拉蒙登的言论，尽管它偏离了PQ的社会民主根源。“大多数魁北克人传统上认为自己是左翼的。然而，在系统性种族主义和容忍宗教行为等社会问题上，他们越来越站在右翼。他们在这些问题上态度强硬，没有看到自己陷入左翼最近对身份问题的痴迷，”拉加德说。
Many in the province agree with St-Pierre Plamondon’s rhetoric, even though it strays from PQ’s social democratic roots, according to radio host Patrick Lagacé. “Most Quebecers traditionally see themselves as being on the left. Increasingly, though, they are on the right when it comes to social issues like systemic racism and accommodation of religious behaviour. They’ve hardened on these issues, and don’t see themselves in the left’s recent fixation on identity issues,” Lagacé said.
圣皮埃尔·普拉蒙登支持率的最大拖累是他经常重申的在人民党政府第一届任期内举行公投的承诺。绝大多数魁北克人不希望很快发生这样的事情，特别是在加拿大与美国陷入贸易战的情况下。在去年的联邦选举中，该省主要投票给自由党领袖马克·卡尼，而不是分离主义魁北克集团，这显然是因为卡尼“举起双臂”反对特朗普政府的姿态。
The biggest drag on St-Pierre Plamondon’s popularity has been his oft-repeated promise to hold a referendum during the first mandate of a PQ government. An overwhelming majority of Quebecers don’t want such a thing any time soon – particularly with Canada locked in a trade war with the US. The province mostly voted for Liberal leader Mark Carney over the separatist Bloc Québécois in last year’s federal election, expressly because of Carney’s “elbows up” posturing against the Trump administration.
但对于PQ来说，唐纳德·特朗普一开始是一个诅咒，然后是一份礼物。圣皮埃尔·普拉蒙登在竞选初期表示，只要特朗普执政，他就不会举行公投，以化解问题，让圣皮埃尔·普拉蒙登集中精力攻击移民和移民。
But for the PQ, Donald Trump was at first a curse, then a gift. Early in the campaign, St-Pierre Plamondon said he wouldn’t hold a referendum as long as Trump was in power, defusing the issue and allowing St-Pierre Plamondon to concentrate on attacking immigration and immigrants.
该党还受益于在可靠的自由党领地蒙特利尔之外的右翼民族主义选票的四方竞争，特别是在魁北克市周围，新兴的魁北克保护党在该市取得了重大进展。民意调查分析师菲利普·福尼尔（Philippe Fournier）表示：“魁北克党正在从大规模的选票分歧中受益，因为那些不喜欢人民党的人在投票给谁方面意见不一。”
The party has also benefited from a four-way race for the right-leaning nationalist vote beyond the reliably Liberal fiefdom of Montreal – particularly around Quebec city, where the upstart Parti Conservateur du Québec has made significant inroads. “The Parti Québécois is benefiting from a massive vote split because those who don’t like the PQ don’t agree on who to vote for,” said poll analyst Philippe Fournier.
尽管PQ可能会组建下一届省政府，但目前尚不清楚它将拥有什么样的授权。民意调查显示，该党徘徊在30%左右，略低于多数政府的可能门槛。
Though the PQ will probably form the next provincial government, it remains unclear what sort of mandate it will have. Polls have the party hovering at roughly 30%, somewhat below the likely threshold for a majority government.
无论如何，圣皮埃尔-普拉蒙东正在为与联邦政府正面交锋奠定基础。他曾提出撤销对魁北克省督办公室（英国王室在该省的代表）的拨款，并承诺推动立法，废除该省与君主制的一切联系。分离主义者将君主制视为加拿大法语少数群体遭受压迫的终极象征。
In any case, St-Pierre Plamondon is laying the groundwork for confrontation with the federal government. He has mused about defunding the office of Quebec’s lieutenant-governor (the British Crown’s representative in the province) and promised to introduce a law to abolish the province’s ties with the monarchy, which separatists see as the ultimate symbol of oppression of Canada’s French minority.
在总理卡尼表示政府可能提高全国移民接收率后，圣皮埃尔-普拉蒙东也严厉批评了他。圣皮埃尔-普拉蒙东称，此举是“滥用权力”，还会对魁北克的法语服务产生进一步的不利影响。
St-Pierre Plamondon also tore into Carney, after the prime minister said the government will probably increase immigration rates in the country. Doing so, St-Pierre Plamondon said, was an “abuse of power” that would have further nefarious effects on French-language services in Quebec.
对于一个以相对年轻的外貌为卖点的人来说，圣皮埃尔-普拉蒙东对君主制的攻击带有时代错置的味道——这正是魁北克党在20世纪70年代全盛时期做过的事情。
For a man who trades on his relative youthfulness, St-Pierre Plamondon’s attacks on the monarchy have the whiff of anachronism – the kind of thing the PQ did in its 1970-era heyday.
攻击联邦政府同样早已过时，而且可能给圣皮埃尔-普拉蒙东带来风险。卡尼在魁北克仍然很受欢迎，而且很可能继续如此，至少在特朗普造成的生存性威胁消退之前是这样。
Attacking the federal government is similarly outdated, and potentially risky for St-Pierre Plamondon. Carney remains popular in Quebec, and is likely to remain so, at least until the existential threat of Trump recedes.