Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Éric Duhaime is angry.

Not about vaccines or “kids these days” and not about the vegan cyclist collective come to swap his red meat for marijuana cigarettes. No, the latest threat to this Once Great Nation — according to the Quebec Conservative leader — is dragon queens indoctrinating your children.

In fairness, when Duhaime released a statement raising the alarm over “dragons queens” story hour yesterday, I think he meant to type “drag queen” (although it would be terrifying to see a dragon in a sequin dress, burning down villages from the sky as Gloria Estefan’s Turn the Beat Around blares overhead). 

But no, he’s referring to famous Quebec drag queen Barbada de Barbades reading stories to children. For those of you still blissfully unaware of this “controversy”, Barbades visits libraries in full regalia — purple wig and all — to encourage kids to read and accept differences in others. There is no sexual component to this and the children are accompanied by their parents, who say the kids think of Barbada as they would a superhero or Disney princess.

Some would argue that in Quebec — where roughly 53 per cent of adults are functionally illiterate — it’s good to get students excited about reading. And children who grow up learning tolerance are far less likely to become bullies.

Speaking of bullies, Duhaime’s almost-dead-in-the-water Conservative party has been running on fumes since last year’s election. No longer able to stoke anger about COVID-19 restrictions, the Conservatives are sinking in the polls and they raised a paltry $17,500 in the first quarter of 2023. Compared to last year — when the Conservatives had more individual donors than any other political party in Quebec — Duhaime’s movement is adrift.

Now, just as he did with vaccine skepticism, Duhaime is banking on manufactured outrage to get back in the fight.

The drag queen Barbada has been putting on these events for years with minimal controversy but that’s starting to change. Earlier this month, three protesters were arrested for disturbing the peace and Barbada’s appearance had to be moved after people swarmed a South Shore library meant to host it.

Perhaps seeing an opportunity to rally his base, Duhaime took to Twitter the following week, asking Quebecers to sign a petition against “exposing our children” to drag queens. This “petition” has no legal bearing and it isn’t on the National Assembly’s website. It’s merely a data harvesting tactic where you enter your name, email address and postal code so the Conservatives can target you for fundraising campaigns.

This is little more than a desperate politician trying to ride the latest wave of anti LGBTQ+ hysteria sweeping across the United States, where drag story hour is one of the hottest among the MAGA electorate.

“There’s definitely a financial incentive to hitch his wagon to the American far right because I don’t believe that — in his heart of hearts — Duhaime is truly a social conservative,” said Dominic Vaillières, a political advisor who’s worked for the Parti Québécois and the CAQ. “But like him or not, Duhaime knows which way the wind blows. He’s really smart and he has great instincts. You don’t survive as long as he did on the radio without having your finger on the pulse.”

To Vaillières point, people who sign Duhaime’s fake petition can leave a comment on the party’s website and boy are some of them mad.

“The people will revolt, they take to the streets to burn heaven and earth because children are a red line,” writes Patrick, who says that his wife, brother and parents will change their vote from CAQ to Conservative in 2026 because of drag queens. He goes on to claim Muslims and “acidic” Jews would probably kill someone like Barbada if she went near their children.

“Nobody would dream of arresting them. And I understand them because they have a perfect alibi. Children are a red line!”

What makes this even more frustrating is that Duhaime — a gay man — is no doubt familiar with the hateful trope associating homosexuality to pedophilia. And his sudden concern about men in drag seems odd considering some of Quebec’s most successful television shows — La Petite Vie, Rock et Belles Oreilles and La Fin du Monde Est à 7 Heures — all featured men in drag at one point or another.

But now there’s outrage to be mined, repackaged and sold back to the masses and that’s exactly what Duhaime specializes in. It’s that same formula that propelled Duhaime to become kind of the airwaves in Quebec City. For those of you fortunate enough not to know of Duhaime, he was once the undisputed champion of talk radio in the provincial capital. And considering Quebec City has a higher percentage of people who drive to work than any other metropolitan area in Canada, that gave Duhaime an enormous influence over local politics.

At the beginning of the pandemic — when he was still on the airwaves at 93.5 FM — Duhaime gave airtime to Dan Marino, a gym owner who vowed to defy public health orders to close his facility. The radio host encouraged people to violate the public order and go to the gym. In the end, Marino’s gym was at the centre of a COVID outbreak that saw 500 people contract the virus.

Duhaime also has his share of responsibility for a climate of aggressive Islamophobia from Quebec’s “radio poubelle” stations ahead of the 2017 mosque shooting that left six people dead. His fixation on Islam continued unabated as people vandalized the only local mosque and threatened its congregants.

Luckily, Duhaime’s latest stunt doesn’t seem to be getting much traction.

Even Journal de Montréal columnist Sophie Durocher — hardly a friend to the LGBTQ+ community — took a shot at the Conservative leader’s panic-mongering. And while the CAQ government has awarded over $500,000 to an anti trans group over the past four years, sources inside the CAQ say the government is considering pulling those funds and re-positioning itself on the issue.

So while it’s tempting to laugh at the “dragon queen” gaffe or just write Duhaime off as just another publicity-starved grifter, you could argue he’s more dangerous now than ever before. Because he’s desperate, no longer beholden to advertisers or CRTC regulations and he’s flush with cash. After Duhaime led the Conservatives from obscurity to a 12 per cent of the popular vote last fall, his party secured $1.3 million in per-vote subsidies every year until the next election.

That’s enough cash for a robust staff and an avalanche of online advertising. It’s enough cash to whip his supporters up into a frenzy over any number of controversies. And, knowing Duhaime’s habit of picking on minorities, it doesn’t bode well for the quality of our public discourse.

“If Duhaime became really really nice tomorrow and adopted similar policy positions as the CAQ, his base would abandon him,” said Vaillières, who also hosts one of the most popular political podcasts in Canada. “So he has to be a firebrand. I don’t think there’s as much traction as he hopes on this particular topic but that won’t stop him from trying.

“Because, in the end, it doesn’t matter if you win Twitter fights and you’re trending on social media. Because in reality, you win elections at the ballot box and Duhaime hasn’t shown he can do that. Sort of like (People’s Party of Canada Leader) Maxime Bernier. He’s great at getting people riled up but he’s never won anything real.

“There is a sense of desperation because if he shows up in 2026 and doesn’t win a single seat again, that’s the end of the road for Duhaime. And desperation doesn’t always make for a good political climate.”

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EXCITING NEWS!!!!

Tomorrow, after nearly three years on Substack, The Rover will be moving to its own website: therover.ca.

This will mark the beginning of a new partnership with Indiegraf — a Canadian-based news organization that helps small publications get funding and reach a larger audience. What that means for you, the reader, is that you’ll see some cosmetic changes but continue getting the same award-calibre journalism in your inbox every week.

What it means for me is that I’m starting to outsource the business end of The Rover so I put more time and effort into our reporting. Short term, that means we’ll probably be getting a full-time journalist working for us over the summer and you’ll likely see an ad campaign on social media. Longer term, we’re working on raising more money through (non-invasive) advertising, grants and sponsorships. I’m not crazy about ads but there will be no pop ups, no autoplay videos and I can veto any company whose products or practices go against The Rover’s values.

Having seen how rapidly local news is crumbling in Montreal — layoffs at The Gazette, CJAD, CTV and Global News have put dozens of reporters out of work in the past few years — we need strong, well-financed media now more than ever.

So please accept my sincerest thank you for supporting us so far and now that I’m committed to our mission of bringing you the best longform journalism in Quebec.

Your friend,

Chris