OTTAWA— The party that wants to break up Canada fell apart on Wednesday when seven of the 10 Bloc Québécois MPs in the House of Commons quit to protest Martine Ouellet’s leadership style.

The leader responded with defiance and vowed to carry on with the rump of her caucus as she continues to juggle her duties at the helm of the Bloc with her role as a Parti Québécois MNA in Quebec City.

“I am staying on as leader,” Ouellet told reporters Wednesday morning, after 70 per cent of her caucus walked out in opposition to her direction of the party.

Hours later, the seven protesting MPs assembled in the House as independent members who now refer to themselves as the Groupe parlementaire Québécois.

“Time after time, we never get to a point where we feel like we can do our job,” said Rhéal Fortin, one of the newly independent MPs from Quebec. “The kind of leadership that she does exert makes it impossible to continue that way.”

Fortin and six of his colleagues jumped ship Wednesday morning, after the Bloc’s caucus met to discuss internal divisions that have simmered in recent days. On Sunday night, the party’s House Leader Gabriel Ste-Marie announced he would resign from his role because of differences with Ouellet.

Fortin said MPs who separated from the Bloc still support the party’s platform, as well the push for Quebec sovereignty that is its raison d’être.

But it was Ouellet’s stance on that very issue that formed the crux of the departing MPs’ opposition to the Bloc leader. Louis Plamondon, another one of the departing MPs, said Ouellet approaches issues in Ottawa by simply arguing that problems wouldn’t exist if Quebec was its own country.

“We have to go further than that, and so it’s the more radical wing of the sovereigntist movement that she’s expressing,” he told reporters in French Wednesday afternoon.

The message for Ouellet, he said, is that she must step down.

Ouellet has been sitting as an independent after she won the Bloc leadership last year. She has kept her provincial seat in Quebec, opting to lead the Bloc caucus from the sidelines of the Commons.

The party won just 10 seats in the 2015 federal election, far short of the Bloc’s former glory, which saw the separatist movement win official Opposition status under former leader Lucien Bouchard in the 1993 federal election — a prelude to the referendum drama two years later, when Quebecers narrowly voted against separation.

Marilène Gill, one of three MPs remaining in the Bloc caucus, said Ouellet made a proposal to the dissenting members earlier this week, offering “mediation” to smooth over disagreements on the emphasis on Quebec sovereignty and Ouellet’s personality. But those overtures were rebuffed, she said.

“That’s difficult for me to understand,” Gill said.

“She’s open, she’s strong ... I’m behind her.”

But with just three MPs left under the Bloc banner, the survival of the once-strong party appears to be an open question. Former leader Gilles Duceppe told The Canadian Press Wednesday that Ouellet should step down.

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“She can’t stay,” he said. “When 70 per cent of your caucus has no confidence in you, it’s a major problem.”

With files from Tonda MacCharles and The Canadian Press

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