Éric Duhaime
Éric Joseph Duhaime is a Canadian columnist, radio host, and politician serving as leader of the Conservative Party of Quebec since April 17, 2021. During his radio career, he has been associated with radio poubelle, a style of provocative right-wing radio popular in Quebec City.
Early life and education
Born on April 15, 1969, in Montreal, Duhaime holds a Bachelor of Arts in political science from the Université de Montréal and a Master's degree from École nationale d'administration publique.Media Career
Columnist Career
He writes for the Journal de Montréal and the National Post and was also a blogger. He participated in various blogs such as Les analystes and also ran a blog on the pages of Journal de Québec.In 2019, he wrote a column for Urbania.Between 2012 and 2014, he published four political essays: L'État contre les jeunes : Comment les baby-boomers ont détourné le système, Libérez-nous des syndicats and La SAQ pousse le bouchon.
Radio Career
He hosted Le retour d'Éric Duhaime on FM93 in Quebec City. He also worked as part of public affairs programs broadcast on Noovo, Télé-Québec, Radio X, and 98,5 FM. During this same period, he was radio host of Duhaime le midi at CKLX-FM. From 2015 to 2020, he was the host or co-host of multiple radio show; notably Normandeau-Duhaime and Duhaime le midi.His radio commentary at Radio X has been described as radio poubelle otherwise known as trash radio. Duhaime faced criticism from singer Karim Ouellet and hockey player Georges Laraque when he called that "hero" in the black community such as Barack Obama were "zeros". He compared sexual assault to car thefts and that said that rape culture does not exists.
Earlier Political career
Political Activism
In 1995, five friends met in Saint-Eustache Quebec, they were Duhaime, Martin Masse, who later became a political advisor to Maxime Bernier and co-founded the People Party of Canada, Montreal Economic Institute co-founders Michel Kelly-Gagnon and Pierre Lemieux as well as Pierre Desrochers, a professor of geography at the University of Toronto Mississauga. These five friends agreed on three priorities to advance the libertarian movement in Quebec: to revive the MEI, where Duhamie later worked there, create Les amis de la liberté, an association serving as a meeting place and to present conferences and to found a magazine which would be Le Québécois Libre. In 2009, he became a consultant for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, leading him to travel to Morocco and Iraq.Duhaime was an activist for the Parti Québécois and Bloc Québécois in the 1990s, then enrolled in Stockwell Day's team in the early 2000s during the leadership race for the Canadian Alliance party.
In 2010, Duhaime co-founded the Réseau Liberté-Québec along with Joanne Marcotte, Roy Eappen, Gérard Laliberté, Ian Sénéchal and Guillaume Leduc. The RLQ is a movement inspired by the advocating of a revival of conservatism and libertarianism in Quebec. The group held conferences from 2010 to 2013, discussing how to end the Quebec model. Members of the organization played a major role in Duhaime victory during the 2021 [Conservative Party of Quebec leadership election], and the ideas expressed during the conference helped shaped the party platform.
In 2017,he allegedly helped fellow Rebel Media contributor Jack Posobiec translate the leaked emails from the Emmanuel Macron presidential campaign.
Political Involvement
Duhaime spent more than a decade as a political advisor for different leaders in Ottawa and Quebec City. He was an advisor for Stockwell Day during his leadership of the Canadian Alliance from 2001 to 2004, Mario Dumont from 2003 to 2008 when Dumont was leader of the Action démocratique du Québec and Gilles Duceppe of the Bloc Québécois. He was one of the campaign organizers for Marc Bellemare during his mayoralty in Quebec City with Vision Quebec from 2004 to 2006. He made his first run for office in 2003, when he ran for the ADQ in Deux-Montagnes, in which he placed third. Duhamie took out an op-ed in La Presse supporting Bernier for his run for the 2017 [Conservative Party of Canada leadership election|Conservative leadership] in 2017. He particularly praised Bernier criticism against dairy farmers.Leader of the Conservative Party of Quebec
On November 22, 2020, Duhaime announced he would be running in the Conservative Party of Quebec leadership election to succeed Adrien D. Pouliot. He won the election with just under 96% of the vote.Duhaime led the Quebec Conservatives in the 2022 Quebec general election, where he boosted the party's popular vote support from 1.46 percent in 2018 to nearly 13 percent. The party, however, won no seats in the National Assembly; Duhaime lost his bid for a seat in Chauveau by placing second.
In an attempt to win a seat in the National Assembly, Duhaime ran as a candidate in the 2025 Arthabaska provincial by-election. He advocated to "release Quebec from the Carbon Stock Exchange". He finished second behind the Parti Québécois' Alex Boissonneault.