Roger-Luc Chayer
Éric Duhaime, a well-known media personality and member of our LGBTQ communities, recently decided to get into politics. He is currently the leader of the Conservative Party of Quebec, a right-wing political party, whether it is center or extreme, it depends on opinion.
For the past few months, I have been a subscriber to Mr. Duhaime’s Instagram account and I have seen messages passing through that have raised certain questions and sometimes startled me. Mr. Duhaime is a politician, he obviously has an agenda to defend and that is the very nature of politics in general. However, too often, rather than spreading the ideas of his party or his program, since he will be a candidate in the 2022 general elections in Quebec, he propagates ideas that do not always hold up scientifically, especially when he talks about COVID and the discomfort I feel comes from the fact that I feel like someone is trying to manipulate me, to manipulate the Quebec reality.
For example, on December 5, 2021, he published a “quote” from Dr. Arruda which read: “Worry is transmitted much faster than any germ. Fear is a very bad adviser, and fear makes you do business that doesn’t have a shred of common sense. And the members of his page respond very aggressively, mixing the conspiracy with the global conspiracy. However, the quote dated from January 2020, well before COVID in Quebec! Mr. Duhaime does not correct his members, he lets go, whereas if he wanted to rally Quebec behind his project, he should at the very least complete the information disseminated.
In a post from October 29, 2021, Mr. Duhaime said: “The Legault government was very eager to strip us of our civil rights, take away our individual freedoms and put democracy on hold in March 2020, but it is much slower. to give them back to us once the health crisis is over. Obviously, aggressive messages from its members follow, often the same ones with a few exceptions and, once again, the leader of the PCQ lets go, even if important facts should be underlined, such as the fact that the emergency decree was voted unanimously by the parties of the National Assembly, that the health crisis is not over, with the spectacular rise in new cases currently. And what freedoms is he talking about? The curfew is a health measure provided for in the law which was passed long before the arrival of the CAQ in the government. The containment? This was a recommendation from the WHO (World Health Organization) which has been applied by most countries around the world.
Finally, in a December 1, 2021 post, rather than highlighting World AIDS Day to his members, he who is openly gay, he posted: “The time has come to move from fear to trust. From division to union”, and this is where I jump when I read all of his messages. And this is where this kind of “Trump” politics risks slipping him into a trend that does no honor to our democratic tradition.