The first time the Parti Québécois came to power promising to hold a referendum on sovereignty, in 1976, Quebec accounted for 27.2 per cent of Canada’s population. More than 100,000 anglophones left the province during the PQ’s first term in office alone. The exodus continued after the 1980 referendum that saw Quebeckers vote to stay in Canada.
By the time of the second referendum – in 1995, following the PQ’s return to power the previous year – Quebec’s share of the Canadian population had declined to 24.7 per cent. While fewer anglophones left the province in the wake of that plebiscite, lower immigration levels than in the rest of Canada meant that Quebec’s population grew much more slowly than the populations of Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia during the subsequent three decades.
