MONTREAL—Parti Québécois leadership frontrunner Pierre Karl Péladeau certainly has the money, but the maladroit media magnate risks losing the ethnic vote for good.

The saviour for the sovereigntist cause has skirted a series of controversies since entering Quebec politics one year ago. But his latest outburst — one that prompted a public apology Thursday — about rising numbers of immigrants to the province risks killing the dream of independence may be the one that stays around to haunt him.

Péladeau was speaking at the end of a debate at Université Laval in Quebec City on Wednesday evening when he summed up his belief that the march toward sovereignty should be conducted at double time.

“We won’t have 25 years ahead of us to achieve this. With demographics, with immigration, it’s clear that we’re losing one riding a year,” he told the crowd.

“We would like to have more control of it, but don’t be fooled. Who controls the immigrants who settle in Quebec? It’s the federal government. Of course we have shared powers, but they swear allegiance to the Queen.”

It was a 30-second comment that reverberated all day Thursday in Quebec’s national assembly. Quebec Health Minister Gaétan Barrette suggested the PQ had imported the playbook of France’s right-wing, anti-immigrant Front National while Premier Philippe Couillard accused his political adversaries of turning dramatically and desperately toward “ethnic nationalism.”

“There is no longer a financial argument or an economic argument for the separation of Quebec so they’re clinging to whatever they can,” Couillard said.

The day ended with an apology posted on Péladeau’s Facebook page.

“This phrase was inappropriate and does not reflect my thinking. The success of our collective project depends on our capacity to bring together all Quebecers of all origins,” he wrote.

“If there’s a reason that I got into politics, it’s to make Quebec a country that will continue to be generous for all of its citizens, no matter their origins.”

Since the provincial election that preceded the 1995 sovereignty referendum, the Parti Québécois’ percentage of the vote share has been in steady decline. From 1994 until 2014, voter support has dropped from nearly 45 per cent to 25.4 per cent — the lowest total since the PQ first fielded candidates in 1970.

The reasons for that drop have been endlessly debated with no clear conclusions. But a faction of the PQ still find themselves nodding in support of former PQ premier Jacques Parizeau, who bitterly blamed the razor-thin 1995 referendum loss on “money and the ethnic vote.”

It was this sentiment that appealed to the PQ base when the party launched a divisive and, in hindsight, devastating plan to introduce a charter of values to highlight a common Québécois identity, in part by banning the wearing of religious symbols by public sector workers.

While popular among party members and old-stock Quebecers, the proposal was seen as a racist policy that would overwhelmingly apply to Muslim women who wear the hijab.

So problematic was the charter that Maria Mourani , a Lebanese Christian and federal MP with the sovereigntist Bloc Québécois abandoned both her party and the independence movement, saying its narrowed interests no longer included those of ethnic and religious minorities.

The architect of the values charter, Bernard Drainville, has resurrected the idea as a central plank in his own leadership campaign, but even he denounced Péladeau’s comments about the immigrant effect on sovereignty. Alexandre Cloutier, a young constitutional lawyer who is also seeking the leadership, said he nearly fell off his chair when he Péladeau delivered his remark.

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“For me, the rush to obtain the sovereignty of Quebec is not because there are 50,000 new Quebecers coming to the province (each year),” he told Montreal’s 98.5 FM radio station. “I hope that those 50,000 new Quebecers vote for the Parti Québécois and that they see themselves in our party.”

Péladeau’s current controversy may pass, as have the others, including the famous fist-pump for sovereignty during the PQ’s election campaign last year, a scolding from the province’s ethics commissioner for lobbying in favour of his financial interests, and heckling a musical performance by a Québécois group performing in English. But if it lasts, it’s because the scandals that confirm voters’ worst fears tend to do the greatest damage.

“It’s uncomfortable,” Pierre Céré, a dark horse PQ leadership candidate, told reporters immediately after Péladeau’s comments. “It’s not only what he said or that he said it awkwardly, but that a portion of the room applauded him.”

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