Éric Duhaime is hoping to make 'history' with Quebec Conservatives. Will he?

GATINEAU, QUE. — Quebec’s Conservative Party Leader Éric Duhaime says he is hoping to make history in this fall’s provincial election.

More than five years after taking the helm of the party, Duhaime, 57, now sees an opportunity to elect not one, not two, but at least 12 members of the National Assembly (MNAs), which would guarantee that the provincial Conservatives form a recognized party in the legislature.

“It’s going to be a historic moment on October 5,” Duhaime told National Post.

The last time the Quebec Conservatives held government at the National Assembly was nearly a century ago, he said. Before the 1935 election, the Conservative Party of Quebec merged with L’Action Libérale Nationale to form the Union Nationale, which would rule Quebec for decades.

The Conservative Party of Quebec wouldn’t return to the provincial scene again until 2009 when the party was reconstituted, but it remained largely irrelevant until Duhaime, a popular media figure, became leader in 2021.

In the 2022 election, the new leader failed to get any MNAs elected — himself included — despite having won 530,786 votes and 12,91 per cent of support in the province.

In comparison, the Liberal Party of Quebec, with 591,077 votes and 14,37 per cent support, elected 21 MNAs and formed the official opposition. François Legault’s Coalition Avenir Québec got its super-majority with 90 seats, after some fierce battles with the Quebec Conservatives.

Duhaime admitted the last election was “frustrating” but said he now knows where his party’s votes are and won’t make the same mistakes of trying to put resources everywhere at once.

The leader admits that it’s been “very tough” to start from scratch and get into the National Assembly. A former CAQ minister, Maïté Blanchette Vézina, switched parties and became his first representative in the legislature this spring after months of discussion with Duhaime.

Duhaime said it is quite unusual to have a party like his that came so close to winning seats in the last election but didn’t succeed come back even stronger this time around.

“It’s one thing to have a beer with your friends in your basement and say, ‘We’re going to start a party and I’m going to run and I’m going to get elected.’ It’s something else to build it for real,” said Duhaime. “I mean, it’s thousands and thousands and thousands of hours by thousands of people.

“Now, we’re on the verge of doing it and of making history, in a certain way,” he said.

At the moment of his interview with National Post, Quebec125, a polling aggregator website, was projecting that the Quebec Conservatives could win most of its coveted 12 seats in the Greater Quebec City area and in the Chaudière-Appalaches region, in southeastern Quebec.

The ridings in Beauce seem to be a strongholds for Duhaime, while other ridings are expected to be a battle with the Parti Québécois (PQ), the CAQ and, in some cases, the Quebec Liberals.

The province’s socialist Québec Solidaire (QS) is mostly competing for urban ridings, which are not exactly Duhaime’s target audience.

With five main political parties at play, “everything is unpredictable right now in Quebec, politically speaking,” said Duhaime.

Right now, the PQ is leading in the polls and could form government, but a majority is looking less and less likely. The Liberals are following closely behind. And Quebec Premier and CAQ Leader Christine Fréchette is experiencing a slight bump in the polls following her election as leader.

Still, Duhaime thinks he can make it to 12 MNAs. “I think that’s the minimum for us,” he said.

Duhaime’s strategy is simple: he is attracting disillusioned CAQ voters who were hoping for a conservative-leaning party but who now find themselves with a record deficit, a bloated public service and the quasi inevitable return of the separation question next election.

“Currently, in Quebec, there’s a huge vacuum on the right,” he said.

But Duhaime said he has ambitions that go well beyond Quebec’s election on Oct. 5.

“For me, it’s not the next election that is the most important. It’s the next generation. We’re building foundations for a strong, small c-conservative, a real right-wing alternative in Quebec.

“That’s always been the view from day one,” he said.

Duhaime said he believes the next government could be a minority, so his party, if it elects enough MNAs, could end up having the balance of power in the National Assembly.

“It’s not insignificant for a party like ours, who almost didn’t exist five years ago,” he said.

Duhaime has lived many lives as a political strategist, media commentator, author and popular radio host before ending up leader of the Quebec Conservatives. Along the way, he has met a network of Conservatives across the country whom he can now count as close friends.

He worked as a political adviser to the Bloc Québécois for Lucien Bouchard, Michel Gauthier and Gilles Duceppe in the 1990s before joining Reform Party Leader Preston Manning’s “United Alternative” movement, which was meant to unite small-c conservatives.

The Reform Party ended up becoming the Canadian Alliance in 2000, and Duhaime supported Stockwell Day’s successful leadership bid. It was during that period Duhaime met Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, who was then working as a political staffer like him.

The two men go way back. In fact, Poilievre spent the summer of 2003 in the Montreal suburb of Deux-Montagnes to knock on doors for Duhaime when he ran for Mario Dumont’s Action démocratique du Québec (ADQ). Duhaime finished third and went to work for Dumont.

In 2009, Duhaime travelled overseas to Morocco, Mauritania and Iraq as a consultant for the National Democratic Institute, an American non-profit dedicated to promote democracy.

When he returned to Quebec, Duhaime said he was suffering from PTSD from the war in Iraq and unsure what to do with his life. At first, he said he garnered some media attention because few Quebecers had been in Iraq during that time and he started getting different media gigs.

Duhaime’s controversial takes rapidly found an audience, even catching the attention of Québecor CEO Pierre-Karl Péladeau, who asked him to join his team of columnists.

But his media influence was strongest as a radio host in Quebec, where he made his mark from 2012 to 2020. It was also during that time that he published books, including one in 2017 where he came out as gay and offered a scathing criticism of homosexual victimhood.

At the time of his interview with National Post, Duhaime was coming back from a whirlwind tour across Canada to promote his fifth and latest book, “Destination Autonomy.”

In the days prior, he had met with Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe in Regina, B.C. Conservative leadership candidate Caroline Elliott, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and former premier Jason Kenney in Edmonton and Calgary, as well as Ontario minister Caroline Mulroney in Toronto.

His message is simple: the “toxic federalism” bred by the Liberals in Ottawa is feeding the separatist movements in Quebec, Alberta and elsewhere in Canada. And the only way to fight back is for conservative politicians across the country to push for more provincial autonomy.

On Thursday, he brought that message to the Canada Strong and Free conference in Ottawa.

“As Conservatives, we have to show that we’re a united front,” Duhaime told the crowd between rounds of applause. “If we want to have some bargaining power, we need to make sure we don’t betray ourselves between each other, and we stand up against Ottawa.”

But the biggest reactions from the crowd came when Duhaime said that Quebec should not be “dependent” on the rest of the country anymore.

“The first way to be independent is to be economically efficient and economically independent from the rest of the country, not being on the welfare of the rest of the country.”

National Post calevesque@postmedia.com

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