Éric Duhaime

Éric Joseph Duhaime (; born April 15, 1969) 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 (ÉNAP).

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 (called En droite ligne). 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 (, 2012), Libérez-nous des syndicats (, 2013) and La SAQ pousse le bouchon (, 2014).

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. From 2015 to 2020, he was the host or co-host of multiple radio shows; notably Normandeau-Duhaime and Duhaime le midi.

His radio commentary at Radio X has been described as radio poubelle otherwise known as trash radio. He compared sexual assault of people who don't lock their doors to car thefts of unlocked cars, and said that rape culture does not exist.

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 (MEI) 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 (Friends of Liberty), an association serving as a meeting place and to present conferences and to found a magazine which would be Le Québécois Libre.

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.

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.

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.

Duhaime led the party in the 2026 Quebec general election, seeking a seat in Bellechasse.

Personal life Duhaime is openly gay, coming out in his 2017 book La fin de l'homosexualité et le dernier gay.

Electoral record