Kevin Paquette: Quebec’s Conservative revolution is only just beginning

Quebec Conservative leader Eric Duhaime on Oct. 6, 2026. Photo by Pascal Ratthe /Tennis Canada

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The Parti Québécois will form Quebec’s next government, and strangely, that is not the most interesting story of this election. One might think that electing a sovereigntist government that promises nothing less than a referendum on Quebec independence in its first term would, on its own, be the most significant political upheaval of this election. But it is instead the emergence of a new political force that could reshape Quebec politics in important ways.

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Monday night, for the first time in more than 90 years, the Quebec Conservative Party elected members to the National Assembly. And not just a handful, but 19, with more than 20 per cent of the vote. Éric Duhaime will enter the salon Bleu in a big way.

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This new reality, combined with the annihilation of the Coalition Avenir Québec, which now finds itself with no seats at all, signals a paradigm shift in Quebec’s political landscape.

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For a long time, centre-right voters in Quebec had to make compromises. They voted for the Action démocratique du Québec, and then for the CAQ, because, at different moments, those parties came closest to their convictions while still having a real chance of taking power. Former CAQ premier François Legault had, after all, built his party around a sometimes-unlikely coalition of former Péquistes, former Liberals and more conservative voters.

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As long as the CAQ was winning, it was easy to put those internal contradictions aside. But they became much harder to ignore once things started going badly.

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Éric Duhaime understood that a part of this electorate was available.

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That means these voters no longer have to settle for being a faction within a broader political coalition. Quebec centre-right Bleus voters now have their own political vehicle.

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The arrival of the Conservatives in the National Assembly now changes a lot of things.

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During the CAQ’s eight years in government, the main parties facing Legault and his government generally tended to attack it from the centre or from the left, particularly when it came to public spending, government services or social policy.

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Systematically, the government was pushed to spend more, create a new regulation or intervene in a particular situation.

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No one ever questioned the role or relevance of the government in certain services, or the merits of certain regulations.

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That era is now over. With a real Conservative caucus, there are now certain questions that will become impossible to avoid in the National Assembly.

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Why does the government need to spend money in certain areas? How many public servants are actually necessary to provide good public services? How far should certain environmental regulations go? What role should the private sector play in health care? Should Quebec develop its natural resources? Why should Quebec remain so reliant on equalization payments?