Conservative Party of Quebec here to stay, Duhaime says

Supporters point to jump in popular support as a victory, though no Conservatives were leading or elected in any riding as of 9 p.m.

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As election results trickled in Monday night, Conservative Party of Quebec Leader Éric Duhaime pledged he and his party won’t soon disappear from the political scene.

With the Coalition Avenir Québec projected to form the next government, the Conservatives were also claiming a victory of sorts. Earning more than 10 per cent of the vote in early counting was a good sign, supporters said.

However, as of 9 p.m., they were not leading or elected in any ridings.

“The party was at one per cent about a year ago, so this is a huge,” said Cédric Lapointe, the party’s press attaché.

Throughout the campaign, Duhaime noted opinion polls reflected a remarkable surge in popular support for the Conservative Party since he became party leader in November 2020, reaching nearly 20 per cent — tied for second with the Liberals and Québec solidaire.

Duhaime’s campaign was marked by nearly daily 5 p.m. rallies, mostly in small towns to hundreds of supporters. The largest rally took place midway through the campaign at the Centre Vidéotron in Quebec City, where roughly 2,500 supporters assembled.

Duhaime based his campaign mostly on hyper-local issues in the Quebec City area and its suburbs.

The party pledged to do away with a controversial tramway project and offer free public transit in the capital region. It said it would axe the CAQ plan to build a tunnel between Lévis and Quebec City and build another bridge instead.

The so-called third link was one of Duhaime’s main campaign topics. He hammered away at the issue almost daily, calling on CAQ Leader François Legault to make public studies conducted by Transport Quebec.

Duhaime, a former Quebec City radio host, drew support from blue-collar loyalists of so-called shock radio, as well as opponents of COVID-19 restrictions. He also gained popularity among Quebec City’s traditional conservative voters, many of whom expressed disillusionment with the CAQ and its perceived betrayal of more right-wing friendly promises like smaller government and tax cuts.

The Conservative Party campaign rarely travelled more than an hour outside Quebec City, save for trips to Montreal for the TV leaders debates and a final campaign rally in Pointe-Claire on Saturday night to court the anglophone vote. To that end, he pledged to repeal Bill 96, the CAQ government’s language law, and replace it with legislation he said would not roll back the rights of the historic English-speaking minority.

Hoping to cash in on anger within the non-francophone community — and on the presumed collapse of the Liberal Party’s voter base — Duhaime tried to convince anglophones his party would give them a true voice in the National Assembly, and would aim to unite English- and French-speakers. His last appeal was made by way of a bilingual speech to supporters at the Hilton hotel in Pointe-Claire.

“Francophone, anglophone, allophone, you are all Quebecers,” Duhaime told the crowd. “Here, you are all essential. We don’t care what year your ancestors came, or what year you came to Quebec.”

Other campaign pledges included help for renters in the form of cheques, 120 km/h highway speed limits, and big tax cuts.

He urged anglophones to abandon their traditional support for the Liberals, saying the threat of sovereignty was no longer an issue.

“That debate has past; there is no referendum anymore, and because of that old division, you were voting Liberal forever, and the other parties didn’t want to talk to you,” he said.

Duhaime’s campaign was not without its foibles. He spent roughly a week answering for his past financial mismanagement, when it was discovered he owed back taxes dating several years on properties he owned in the Quebec City area.

Toward the end of the campaign, Duhaime seemed to be panicking in his own riding after a poll showed him trailing CAQ incumbent Sylvain Lévesque. He urged supporters to converge on his Chauveau riding to knock on doors and work the phones in the hours leading up to election day.

jmagder@postmedia.com

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