Quebec voters choose a new government on Monday, with opinion polls indicating the separatist Parti Québécois is likely to win and is closing in on a majority in the provincial legislature, according to CBC News.

A PQ victory would install Quebec’s first sovereignist government since 2014 and present Prime Minister Mark Carney with a political test that has not been on the federal radar for more than a decade, CBC reported.

The election comes weeks before an Oct. 19 referendum in Alberta on whether that province should begin a process to leave Canada.

PQ leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon has promised not to hold an independence referendum until after Donald Trump is no longer U.S. president, citing the volatility of that administration and how it could affect results.

He remains committed to the sovereignist cause, telling supporters he is optimistic even though most polls show only 30 per cent of Quebecers are interested in a referendum at all. In the final campaign debate, he quoted former premier Jacques Parizeau: “We shouldn’t be afraid of democracy.”

In an editorial board interview with La Presse this week, St-Pierre Plamondon took aim at Ottawa. “I think it is difficult to find more evident declines and reversals than over the past 10 years,” he said. “It is not referendums that are to blame for the decline of French, the decline in our demands for health transfers and that of immigration, that has been sabotaged by the federal government.”

As premier, St-Pierre Plamondon has promised to abolish the post of intergovernmental affairs minister and instead appoint a minister of independence tasked with making gains for Quebec.

The last sovereignist government in Quebec ended in 2014, when Premier Pauline Marois’s PQ was voted out after less than two years in office without holding a referendum. In the 2003 election, PQ leader Bernard Landry promised a referendum only if he had the “mortal certainty” he would win it; he lost to Quebec Liberal leader Jean Charest.

Carney’s agenda this week has centred on major projects, with the expansion of a liquefied natural gas plant on the West Coast and the referral of an Alberta high-speed rail strategy to the Major Projects Office. A West Coast pipeline is widely expected to be designated a project of national interest to accelerate approval, according to CBC.

Polls suggest Carney’s popularity remains high across Canada, including in Quebec, which is his Liberal government’s political power base, holding 44 of the province’s 78 federal ridings.

In an analysis for CBC, journalist Rosemary Barton wrote that working as Team Canada has been central to the federal response to the trade war with the United States, and that a PQ government could fracture that approach. Carney’s ability to manage the country through crisis and show Quebec it is a valued part of the federation, without feeding a separatist movement that is no longer dormant, is about to be tested in real time, she wrote.

Nearly a quarter of Quebec voters cast ballots in advance voting ahead of the Oct. 5 election, according to CBC.