Leader Éric Duhaime wins seat, Quebec Conservatives soar on election night
Posted October 5, 2026 8:29 pm.
Last Updated October 5, 2026 9:25 pm.
The night started with some history for the modern Quebec Conservative Party (PCQ): its first seat by way of an election.
It didn’t take long for that one seat — fittingly leader Éric Duhaime’s in Bellechasse — to grow into many, many others.
The Quebec Conservatives surged on election night Monday, projected to win some 19 seats, a result that gives them official party status — which was Duhaime’s goal coming into the election.
“Hope is being reborn in Quebec, because tonight we have just written a page of history,” Duhaime told supporters. “For the first time in 100 years, Quebecers have decided to send a large caucus of Conservative MNAs to the National Assembly.”
The Conservatives won their seats in the greater Quebec City area, where Duhaime campaigned extensively.
Among the elected Conservative MNAs was a familiar face: Maïté Blanchette Vézina, who won her riding of La Peltrie. Blanchette Vézina, formerly representing Rimouski, was the only Conservative MNA at the National Assembly when the election was triggered. She got there by joining the PCQ months after quitting the CAQ to sit as an Independent.
Also projected to win their seat, among others, was Karine Laflamme in Lévis, defeating the CAQ’s Bernard Drainville in the process; 23-year-old Éloïse Coulombe in Charlesbourg; Karim Elayoubi in Chauveau; and Renaud Labrecque in Lotbinière-Frontenac.
The ridings in the Capitale-Nationale region have a long history of voting for right-of-centre conservative parties. The Quebec Conservatives did well there in the 2022 election, losing some ridings by just a few hundred votes.
In that election four years ago, the Conservatives received nearly 13 per cent of the popular vote but failed to win a single seat because the support was spread out. That led Duhaime to criticize Quebec’s political system as “democratic distortion.” The now 57-year-old lost his own riding of Chauveau that year. He was defeated again in an August 2025 byelection in Arthabaska in central Quebec.
But Duhaime, the former radio host, managed to turn votes into seats this year — namely by focusing his efforts on the greater Quebec City area.
And that strong showing is, in part, what limited the Parti Québécois to a minority government. Duhaime has promised to use his leverage to act as a “guard dog” that will protect taxpayer interests and attempt to block a PQ referendum vote.
Thus begins the next chapter in Duhaime’s political life. In the 1990s, he was a parliamentary aide and researcher for the Bloc Québécois and an adviser to the party’s leader. From 2000 to 2002, he was an adviser to the federal Canadian Alliance leader, Stockwell Day.
In 2003, Duhaime ran for provincial office in a Montreal-area riding as a member of the right-of-centre Action démocratique du Québec, coming third. He then worked as an adviser to the party’s leader until 2008.
Duhaime then spent nearly a decade as a “shock jock” radio host in the provincial capital. His return to politics saw him become the leader of the Conservative Party of Quebec in 2021, winning nearly 96 per cent of the vote in the leadership race.
During the campaign, Duhaime repeatedly presented his party as the only one offering something different.
He’s promised to slash gas taxes by withdrawing Quebec from the carbon market with California, lift the province’s ban on oil and gas extraction, open the door to more private health care, and cut $47 billion in state spending over five years.
He’s also had to repeatedly defend candidates who have made controversial statements.
An earlier iteration of the provincial Conservatives, which dissolved in 1936, won many seats in the National Assembly over its 72-year history. This modern version of the party was revived in 2009.
–With files from The Canadian Press
