Formerly a member of the Quebec Liberal Party, René Lévesque quit the party with a few hundred others after his proposal of a sovereign Quebec associated to the rest of Canada was rejected during a party convention. The MSA quickly began to move for a merger of all the independence movements in Quebec, which at the time were the Rassemblement pour l'indépendance nationale (RIN) and the Ralliement national (RN). On October 26 Pierre Bourgault, leader of the RIN, dissolved the party and invited its members to join the PQ.