Conservatives hoping for first seat as two-way race emerges in Quebec byelection

Quebec Conservative Leader Éric Duhaime speaks at the legislature in Quebec City, Friday, June 6, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jacques Boissinot

A polarizing figure who railed against pandemic restrictions and wants to break Quebec’s consensus on carbon pricing could be days away from claiming a long-coveted seat in the provincial legislature. 

The stakes are high for Éric Duhaime, the former shock-jock at the helm of Quebec’s Conservative party. Despite four years on the job, Duhaime has not yet been able get any members of his party elected.

But if he comes out on top in a Monday byelection in the central Quebec riding of Arthabaska, Duhaime’s unabashedly right-wing presence in Quebec’s national assembly will shift the political landscape in a province that has not elected a Conservative party member in 90 years. 

“It could be a huge breakthrough,” Duhaime said in an interview. “And it could change politics in Canada (through) having a true Conservative party in Quebec.”

A two-way race has emerged in the riding between Duhaime and the sovereigntist Parti Québécois, which has been leading in Quebec polls for the better part of two years. The governing Coalition Avenir Québec, which has won the riding easily in every election since the party’s founding in 2011, seems poised to suffer its third consecutive byelection defeat amid widespread dissatisfaction with the government of Premier François Legault. 

Parti Québécois candidate Alex Boissonneault, a well-known former journalist, said voters are looking to his party as the best option to replace the CAQ government in the next Quebec election, set for October 2026. But he concedes that some of his support is coming from people voting strategically against Duhaime.

In the fiercely fought campaign for Arthabaska, local concerns have given way to a referendum on the Conservative leader, said political analyst Alain Rayes, a former federal Conservative MP for the region. 

“When we talk to people on the ground, it’s really, ‘We want to give Éric Duhaime a chance,’ or, ‘We don’t want anything to do with Éric Duhaime and we don’t want to be the ones who open the door, who roll out the carpet toward the national assembly,’” he said. 

Quebec’s first premier was a Conservative, and the original Conservative Party of Quebec dominated politics in the province for 30 years after Confederation. The party’s support collapsed at the end of the 19th century, however, and conservatives did not form government again until the ascension of Maurice Duplessis’s right-leaning Union Nationale in the 1930s. 

The emergence of Quebec’s independence movement and the Parti Québécois in the 1960s created a new divide on the question of sovereignty that would define provincial politics for decades to come, with the Quebec Liberals as the default choice for federalists. It wasn’t until the 2018 election of the right-leaning Coalition Avenir Québec – a nationalist party promising not to hold a referendum – that separatism took a back seat as the dominant issue in Quebec politics. 

It was in this context that Duhaime took the reins in 2021 of the Conservative Party of Quebec, newly reconstituted a little over a decade earlier. Duhaime, formerly a conservative talk-radio host, built up the party’s base by tapping into frustration over pandemic health restrictions, and now presents himself as the voice of a growing number of Quebecers who don’t see their values reflected by any of the province’s four major parties. 

“They’re all proposing a little bit less or a little bit more of the same model,” said Duhaime, who describes himself as a longtime friend of federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre. “It’s the interventionist model. We’re elsewhere. We’re saying, ‘Look, this is over.’”

In recent months, Duhaime has kept himself in the headlines by calling for the abolition of Quebec’s carbon-pricing system after the federal carbon levy was scrapped in April – a position not shared by any party with seats in the legislature. 

“There are several subjects on which there is almost unanimity in the national assembly,” said political analyst Antonine Yaccarini. “And the Conservative party wants to break that unanimity.”

In the 2022 election, Duhaime’s Conservatives won nearly 13 per cent of the vote – barely less than any of the main opposition parties. But because of how his support was distributed, he failed to win a single seat. “We represent more than one Quebecer out of eight and we have zero seats out of 125,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Parti Québécois is trying to prove it still has what it takes to form government next year. “People are extremely disappointed with the CAQ government,” Boissonneault said. “We are experiencing momentum in the Parti Québécois that it has not experienced for several years.”

The sovereigntist party has already won two byelections from the CAQ in the last two years, but has faced questions about its promise to hold a third referendum on independence by 2030, given U.S. President Donald Trump’s economic threats. Boissonneault downplayed that pledge this week, saying he thinks voters in Arthabaska understand sovereignty isn’t the “fundamental issue” in this campaign. 

If the PQ fails to win Arthabaska, Yaccarini said, it could give the impression the party has lost “the wind in its sails.”

But Duhaime’s political future could also be at stake on Monday night. If he loses, Rayes, the former Conservative MP, said, “it’s going to be more and more difficult for him.”

The riding, a largely agricultural region surrounding the town of Victoriaville, gave the Conservatives nearly 25 per cent of the vote during the last provincial election. The federal riding of Richmond–Arthabaska has voted Conservative since 2015.

The seat was vacated earlier this year when the Coalition Avenir Québec incumbent resigned to run for the federal Conservatives.

Legault’s party could now face a crushing defeat in a riding where it won more than 50 per cent of the vote in the last two elections. Poll aggregator Qc125.com shows the Conservatives and PQ tied at 37 per cent support in the riding, with the CAQ and the Liberals far behind at nine per cent. 

Keven Brasseur, the CAQ candidate and former president of the local chamber of commerce, said the polls don’t align with the reaction he’s getting from voters. “There are people who tell me they want to choose someone local,” he said. “There are a group of people who say they vote for the candidate before the political party.”

Still, it’s undoubtedly Duhaime who has the most to gain – and possibly the most to lose – on Monday. 

“We’re representing a huge percentage of the population and at least we’re going to have a voice,” he said. “There’s going to be something different. I think that’s what people are looking for.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 7, 2025.

Maura Forrest, The Canadian Press