Parti 51 is a political party in the Canadian province of Quebec that was founded in the late 1980s under the leadership of Serge Talon. The party has proposed the separation of Quebec from Canada in order to seek admission to the United States as the 51st state of the American union. The party had no success in winning any seat in 1989 election to the National Assembly of Quebec, and in the spring of 1990, asked the Direction of Elections of Quebec to dissolve the party because it no longer had enough members to form an executive committee. In 2016, the party was relaunched by a Saint-Georges-based lawyer, Hans Mercier. Becoming a state of the United States of America has been the primary purpose and goal of Parti 51 since its inception.
History
In 2016, Saint-Georges lawyer Hans Mercier re-launched Parti 51, again calling and campaigning for the annexation of Quebec for it to become an American state. By the time of the 2018 election, the party had an estimated 1,100 members. Mercier told La Presse that the times have changed since the party's previous era, as Quebec sovereigntism has waned in popularity. Mercier argued that Americans would be welcoming of a new Quebec state, and pointed to a survey taken during the Administration of George W. Bush that suggested nearly 34% of Quebecers would support joining the United States. Of the various reasons and advantages argued by the party in favor of joining the United States of America, one strong aspect has focused on economic grounds, as for instance by the early 2000s the mutual trade volume between Quebec and the U.S.A had surpassed that of Quebec and the remaining Provinces of Canada combined. Similar to the example of Quebec's Parti 51 additional movements and formal political parties have formed across other Provinces likewise seeking statehood admission into the United States such as for example in Alberta separatism with the formation of Alberta 51.
In the 1989 Quebec provincial election, the only election in which it nominated candidates, the party nominated 11 candidates, who won 3,846 votes, or 0.11% of the popular vote in the province. The party ran mostly in Anglophone areas of the province.
