Conservative Party chooses Duhaime
The Conservative Party of Quebec has a new leader, whose notoriety outweighs its own.
“I want to defend ordinary folks,” said columnist and radio host Éric Duhaime, after he was elected leader of the party with 96 per cent of votes at the end of a virtual sixmonth campaign.
His 9,773 votes dwarfed the 408 of his opponent, IT company owner Daniel Brisson, in the official results announced Saturday.
In his victory speech, Duhaime said he wants to defend those who “were treated as toothless because they don't agree with what the government is doing or who were treated without rhyme or reason as conspiracy theorists, as “covidiots, as “touristatas” or even as cowards by François Legault and a media and political elite who have lost touch with the reality of ordinary people.”
He said he would speak for those he called “COVID martyrs” who “suffer enormously from health extremism ... and incompetence” of the Coalition Avenir Québec government.
Duhaime, a former political adviser known for his libertarian opinions, was a columnist for Quebecor Media and a commentator on several radio stations, most recently FM93 in Quebec City. He succeeds Adrien Pouliot, who announced in October he would step down after seven years as head of the party, which has no official affiliation with the Conservative Party of Canada and has never elected anyone to the National Assembly.
Quebec's health-care system has become “simply indefensible in its current form” and needs to be reformed, Duhaime said.
“Every Quebecer must have easy and fast access to quality health care. It's a non-negotiable principle, but everything else must be on the table and reviewed.”
He said decentralizing the decision-making process and privatizing more of the system would fix the problem.
Duhaime also called for the party to become more “nationalist” and “patriotic” but not get involved in “constitutional and linguistic squabbles.” He said, in English, that anglophone Quebecers have historic rights that must be respected.
About 1,500 people followed the results on the party's Facebook page. The party said it had multiplied its membership by a factor of 20 and it now stands at 14,000.
The party received 1.46 per cent of votes in the 2018 general election, ending in sixth place behind the Green Party.
Duhaime will try to get elected to the legislature. He had run previously in 2003 under the Action démocratique du Québec in the Deux-montagnes riding, finishing third.