In a province where opposition parties have generally backed the government’s restrictions on COVID-19, Duhaime has raised support through his opposition to lockdown measures.  His party, which received less than 2 percent of the vote in the 2018 Quebec provincial election when it was led by Adrien Puglio, is now regularly in second or third place.
“There are a lot of people in Quebec right now who are upset and I think we are becoming the voice of those people,” Duhaime said in an interview last week.  “In the last two years, in managing the crisis, the government has sacrificed a lot of people and these people have suffered a lot.”
But as Duhaime exploits the anger of the people over the pandemic restrictions, the mask he wore last week is a sign of the thin line he is walking in as he tries to turn his party into a true political force in the province ahead of elections this fall.
“Even though many of the people who support him are angry, he does not seem so angry and so radical in some of his positions,” said Daniel Belland, director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada.  “Some of the people who support him have more radical views, what he presents is a more delicious picture.”
Christian Bourque, executive vice president of pollster Leger, said the Quebec Conservative Party, which has no formal affiliation with the Conservatives, has become a home for people who feel they have been talked to or rejected as conspiracy theorists. .  , during the pandemic.
“He was able to give them a place, to give them a platform they did not have before and a form of legitimacy,” Burke said in a recent interview.
In a March 11 Leger poll, the Conservatives equaled Quebec’s left-wing party in third place, with 14 percent of those polled saying they planned to vote for the party.  The Avenir Quebec ruling coalition was at 41 percent, while the Liberals were at 18 percent.
In the Quebec area – where CAQ holds nine of the 11 seats and where Duhaime plans to run – the Conservatives were in second place with 23 percent.  Burke said he puts local incumbents at risk of losing to a Conservative or seeing another party take advantage of the split in the right-wing vote.
Beland said he believed the biggest factor in the rise of the Conservatives was Duhaime himself.  The Conservative leader is well known in Quebec City, where he hosted a show on the popular right-wing radio station Radio X before entering politics.
Proponents of her case have been working to make the actual transcript of this statement available online.  THE CANADIAN PRESS / Jacques Boissinot
The other key factor is the pandemic, which has boosted the fortunes of populist parties such as the Quebec Conservatives and Maxime Bernier’s Canadian People’s Party, Belland said.
“Duhaime is to the right of the CAQ and is trying to entice a number of different constituencies – some people who do not vote normally because they are unhappy with the political process, but also people who voted for the CAQ last time and I’m not happy with “The fact that the party is perhaps more moderate than they expected in power,” Belland said in a recent interview.
Duhaime dismisses comparisons with the stricter Bernier, who joined Freedom Convoy protesters in Ottawa in February.  Duhaime said he did not support any federal party.
“I’m double-vaccinated, I’m not against the vaccine, I’ve never been to a demonstration,” Duhaime said.  “But at the same time, I have to say that I am in favor of freedom of choice. It is not the role of government to tell you what to inject into your body or not.”
He said he believed the government’s approach to the COVID-19 pandemic should be based on informing people and not on coercive measures.
“When you want to violate freedoms, civil rights and democracy, you have a responsibility to show that the measures you impose are, without a doubt, necessary,” he said.
In June, his party acquired its first member of the legislature, Claire Samson, who was ousted from the Coalition Avenir Quebec parliamentary group after donating to the Provincial Conservatives.
Duhaime, who is openly gay, said his party is different from other Canadian Conservative parties because there are no social conservatives in his movement.
His party believes the Quebec government has a responsibility to promote the French language, but opposes the current government’s language law reform because it invokes a clause that does not apply to protect it from litigation.
But Duhaime said he supports Quebec Bill 21, the secularism law passed in 2019, and prohibits some government officials, including teachers and police officers, from wearing religious symbols at work.  Although the bill also cited the extension clause, Duhaime said he did not want to reopen a divisive debate and go against the views of the Quebec majority.
He said his time as a gay man in Iraq and Morocco had strengthened his belief in secularism.
“I understand the fear and I understand that when people wear their religious symbols, it could have an impact on the neutrality of the state towards you,” he said.
This Canadian Press report was first published on April 10, 2022.