Who is Éric Duhaime and what political project is he defending?
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
It is not easy to answer this question.
Since the start of the campaign, the politician has impressed. He took the reins of a struggling party and pulled it out of the margins. The Conservative Party of Quebec today rivals the Liberal Party, Quebec solidaire and the Parti Quebecois in voting intentions. It’s not nothing.
Mr. Duhaime is also running a respectful campaign. Those who feared that he borrowed Donald Trump’s or Pierre Poilievre’s instruction manual can be reassured.
This is excellent news for the social climate and the health of our democracy.
It is moreover with cordiality that he lent himself to an editorial interview with The Press. A somewhat special interview which, due to scheduling difficulties, took place by videoconference, forcing the Conservative leader to answer our questions from his campaign bus, between Longueuil and Lotbinière.
But we must not stop at the smooth and polished facade displayed by Mr. Duhaime in the campaign. Because if we dig deeper, we find that the varnish cracks. That the conservative platform rests on illusions.
And that Mr. Duhaime drags with him a lot of pans that undermine his ability to establish himself as a unifying leader capable of leading the province. After all, that is the mandate he is asking of the people.
Let’s start by saying that there is room for a resolutely right-wing party in Quebec.
Mr. Duhaime dares to attack head-on our famous “Quebec model”, characterized by a very present state and high taxes. It’s perfectly healthy. The sacred cows can go to graze elsewhere and we will never confront our public policies too much.
When Mr. Duhaime advocates a greater presence of the private sector in health or in our daycare system, for example, he forces debates that serve democracy. Same thing when he talks about abolishing the SAQ monopoly or reducing business subsidies.
But the big problem with the Conservative platform is that it is based on an illusion: that we can split the Quebec model in two and keep only the half that suits us. In short, that we can abolish high taxes while maintaining strong public services.
Still in an interview, Mr. Duhaime reiterated that “there is no question of cutting services to the population”.
We swim here in full magical thought. The aging of the population, the staff shortage and our infrastructure deficits will force us to increase our expenses considerably over the next few years to maintain the same level of service. However, the Conservative platform plans to lower them by more than 10.6 billion per year compared to the reference scenario, according to the Research Chair in Taxation and Public Finance at the University of Sherbrooke.
States where taxes are lower than in Quebec do exist. But there, parents don’t get $200 a week to babysit (a Conservative promise). And they don’t have a network of childcare centers like the one the Conservatives want to maintain.
Let Mr. Duhaime dream of a slimming diet for the state, fine. But he must have the honesty to present both sides of the coin to citizens. Otherwise, it amounts to promising butter and butter’s money.
The other major pitfall of the conservative platform is the environment. Mr. Duhaime wants to completely eliminate our greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction targets and build oil infrastructure that will last for decades. This is precisely the opposite of what science dictates to limit global warming.
When asked what measure he intends to introduce to reduce GHGs, he mentions “technological solutions” without citing a single concrete example. This is not serious.
Quebecers also have the right to know who the real Éric Duhaime is. Behind the facade of the posed politician hides a first-class agitator.
A man who has spent years using his radio platform to make rude and contemptuous remarks towards the less fortunate, women, cultural communities.
Éric Duhaime once argued that those who don’t pay taxes shouldn’t have the right to vote. He compared a wave of sexual assaults at Laval University to a car theft, blaming the victims. He trivialized the deposit of a pig’s head in front of a mosque.
He says today that he is quoted “out of context”. It’s too easy. No context can justify such remarks. Éric Duhaime’s statements do not just belong to the past. Even today, the political movement he leads is nourished by it. They are inseparable from what he is and what he represents. And are unworthy of an aspiring prime minister.