EXPLAINER: Duhaime’s letter to 46,221 young people, or what parties know about your age

An envelope with your name on it

In the mailbox

It drops into the mailbox, and it knows your age.

Your first name. Your last name. Your address. Inside, a letter signed by a party leader. He addresses you in the familiar form, as if you were old friends. He tells you that you belong to the first generation in history that will be poorer.

You are 19. Or 21. Or 22. You have never written to this party.

It writes to you anyway. And it knows your age.

The ordinary gesture

You open it standing in the hallway. Bag still on your shoulder. The familiar tone surprises you.

You skim it. You put it on the counter. Between a phone bill and a grocery flyer.

Nobody wonders where the address came from. Or how they knew the age. Or who else got the same one.

And yet it is the one question the envelope does not settle.

An envelope that knows your age deserves to be turned over.

46,221 young people, winnable ridings

The Journal de Québec’s figure

On September 25, the Journal de Québec reports the mailing. Éric Duhaime, leader of the Conservative Party of Quebec, sent a signed letter to 46,221 young people aged 18 to 22.

They live in ridings the party considers winnable, the daily writes.

The vote is on October 5. For many, it will be a first vote.

Why the young

Duhaime explains himself to the Journal’s parliamentary bureau. The Conservative vote is younger than average, he says. The party wants to motivate these voters to turn out.

They are the ones, he adds, who usually vote the least.

The math is simple. A voter who stays home does not count. A voter who shows up can swing a riding.

The party is betting on this letter. It is also betting on its strength on social media. Encouraging polls, particularly in the greater Quebec City region, are pushing it that way, according to the Journal.

46,221 envelopes, and each one was chosen.

Mulroney, a first car, a house

A biography up front

The letter opens with a memory. At 19, Duhaime recounts, he voted for Brian Mulroney.

Once his studies were done, he bought his first car. He traveled as much as he could. Then he bought his own home.

Then the letter turns. That dream, he writes, has become much harder for your generation. It is not your fault. It is the fault of the generations before.

In his view, successive politicians bought elections by putting future generations in debt.

What the leader clarifies

In an interview, he qualifies that. Previous generations should not be blamed, he says. Previous governments should. They made promises they could not afford.

His answer comes down to two levers. Cut waste. Lower taxes. Young people could then afford to own a home.

He is not afraid, he says, of alienating older voters. Many parents and grandparents tell him they want a better future for their young.

It is a political letter. Signed. Owned. It has every right to exist.

The real question is not what it says. It is what it assumes.

A letter about age first assumes knowing the age.

Name, address, sex, date of birth

What the list contains

Élections Québec, the province’s elections agency, spells it out. The electoral list contains your last name, your first name, your address, your sex and your date of birth. And your riding.

The election law allows provincial parties and members of the National Assembly to receive this list three times a year. During an election period, parties and candidates can also obtain it.

It knows your name. It knows your address. It knows your sex. It knows your date of birth. It knows your riding.

And it circulates.

You gave this information in order to vote. It can also be used to write to you. The list goes out three times a year, whether you know it or not.

A demonstration by envelope

I read it this way, and I say so early. This letter is first of all a demonstration. It shows what the electoral system puts in the parties’ hands: the means to find you by your age.

Your date of birth travels more than you do.

It is not an anomaly. It is not a secret. It is not unique to the Conservative Party.

It is the ordinary workings of Quebec democracy. That is why it is worth a look.

A party does not need to ask your age.

Three times a year

The signed pledge

The law governs this flow. To obtain the lists, members and people designated by the parties pledge to protect their confidentiality, Élections Québec notes.

They also pledge to restrict their use to the purposes set out in the election law. They sign a form.

The law forbids anyone to use information about a voter for other reasons. It also forbids allowing it to be passed to anyone not entitled to it.

One detail changes the tone. Candidates, Élections Québec specifies, are invited to sign this pledge before obtaining the lists.

Invited.

What the rule allows

Soliciting voters during a campaign is, in all likelihood, at the heart of those electoral purposes. It is the expected use of a list handed to parties.

So the rule does not say: nobody will write to you.

It says: nobody will do anything else with what they know about you.

And yet between those two sentences lies all the freedom to sort. By riding. By sex. By year of birth.

The law bans misuse. It allows sorting.

An address of unknown origin

What the party has not said

Precision matters here. The Conservative Party has not said where the addresses of its 46,221 recipients came from.

The letter does not say how they were chosen. The letter does not say what it cost. The letter does not say who drew up the list of winnable ridings.

The electoral list is one possible source. It is not the only one.

A party can also build its own files. It must then obtain people’s consent, points out the Commission d’accès à l’information, Quebec’s privacy watchdog.

Nothing points to an offense

Nothing in the file points to an offense. I am not writing that.

I am writing something else. Selecting 46,221 people aged 18 to 22 requires knowing their year of birth. And the law has that data handed to the parties.

So the documented question is this: where did the selection come from, and under which permitted purpose does it fall.

The party can answer in one sentence.

An address of unknown origin remains an open question.

The sitting member starts ahead

Three lists a year against one

The detail nobody looks at is on Élections Québec’s page.

Members of the National Assembly receive their riding’s list three times a year. Candidates receive only their riding’s list, and only during an election period.

So a sitting member knows their voters, by age, all year round. A new candidate discovers them when the writ drops.

Who gains from sorting by age

Sorting by age benefits first those who already have the list. The parties. The sitting members.

It does not benefit the voter being sorted.

That voter does not know they were chosen. Does not know by whom. Does not know on what criterion.

This asymmetry breaks no rule. The law provides for it this way, and that is exactly what deserves to be seen.

It is the ordinary asymmetry of a system that trusts parties. It targets no one. It favors those already there.

The list favors whoever already has it.

A right of access that stops at the party

The Commission’s rule

Here is the vertigo. There is nothing partisan about it.

Parties, their bodies, members and independent candidates must protect the personal information they hold on voters, the Commission d’accès à l’information explains. They must designate a person in charge among their leaders. They must obtain consent before collecting information.

But their regime differs from the general one.

What stays closed to you

You cannot ask a party for access to what it holds on you.

You cannot demand that it correct it.

You cannot ask it to de-index or re-index it.

You cannot bring a disagreement before the Commission for review.

You can file a complaint. Penalties exist, according to the Commission. Up to C$50,000 as an administrative penalty. From C$5,000 to C$100,000 as a penal fine.

You still have to know what to complain about.

Under the general regime, a company that writes to you must tell you what it knows about you if you ask. A party that writes to you is under no such obligation.

Your age is in their hands. Their file, never in yours.

Half the postage

An election expense

A campaign letter has a cost. Paper. Printing. Postage.

According to Élections Québec, the cost of any good or service used during an election period to favor a candidate or a party is an election expense.

It must be authorized by the official agent. Valued at fair market value. Paid out of the election fund. Entered in the report.

Advertising is one of the four categories provided for, along with goods and services, rental of premises, travel and meals.

Who reimburses

After the report is audited, the state reimburses 50% of election expenses incurred and paid in accordance with the law. It does so for parties that win at least 1% of valid votes, Élections Québec specifies.

In 2022, the Conservative Party of Quebec reported C$4,487,878 in election expenses, according to Élections Québec’s table.

If the letter appears in the 2026 report and the party reaches the threshold, half its cost will come back from taxpayers.

The exact cost, if it appears in the report, will only be known once that report is filed and audited. After the vote, then. After your vote.

You could pay for half of the letter that found you.

The recipient pays half the postage.

Poorer than their parents

Three generations at the same age

The letter makes one checkable claim. You would be the first generation poorer than your parents’.

On May 6, 2026, Statistics Canada published a study on millennials and housing.

Between ages 25 and 39, their adjusted homeownership rate was 49.9% in 2021. Generation X, at the same age, in 2006: 56.2%. Baby boomers, in 1991: 55.9%.

The share of young adults living with their parents has doubled. From 8.2% in 1991 to 16.3% in 2021.

The share of those married with children fell from 46.6% to 26.6% over the same period.

Fewer houses. More childhood bedrooms. Fewer cribs.

What the study does not say

The study covers millennials. The letter is addressed to people aged 18 to 22. They are not millennials.

It measures housing. Not total wealth. Owning later is not being poorer.

In Montreal, the median home value rose from C$214,000 in 1991 to C$448,000 in 2021, in constant dollars, according to the same study.

The wall exists. It has a price.

The letter turns a measured difficulty into a foretold fate. The nuance gets lost in the envelope.

A measured wall is not a condemned generation.

The catch-up in the late thirties

What La Presse notes

La Presse, presenting the study on May 6, points to a phenomenon the letter leaves out.

The authors observe a catch-up toward the late thirties. Millennials buy later. They end up buying.

The sharpest change is in how long they live with their parents.

Montreal, less affected

In Montreal, that share rose less than elsewhere, roughly half as much, La Presse writes. Statistics Canada attributes it to lower rents than in the other big cities.

The study’s figures show it. In Montreal, the share of young adults living with their parents went from 9.1% to 14.9% between 1991 and 2021. The adjusted homeownership rate slipped from 44.1% to 41.6%.

A decline. Not a collapse. A cheaper rent keeps people at their parents’ place for less time.

The life course is stretching out. Studies last longer. Careers start later.

And yet a campaign letter has no room for a catch-up. It has room for a shock.

Later is not never. The letter prefers never.

A twenty-point gap

The under-35 vote

On one point, Duhaime is right. Élections Québec confirms it.

In the October 3, 2022, election, turnout reached 66.15%. Among voters under 35, it hovered around 54%, according to Élections Québec.

More than twenty points below that of 65-to-74-year-olds.

In other words, nearly one voter under 35 in two did not vote.

One in two.

Young people vote much less than others, the institution sums up.

A first vote, whatever the party

A letter that gets a 19-year-old to vote for the first time does useful work. Whatever party sends it.

Élections Québec says it pursues the same goal: making voting easier to access, La Presse reports.

True, and it does not change this: you can encourage young people to vote and still tell them where you got their address.

Getting young people to vote does not require hiding the list.

September 25, on campus

The voting calendar

The letter arrives at the right moment.

Since September 25, students and staff at several CEGEPs, Quebec’s junior colleges, universities and vocational training centers can vote on site. They will be able to again from September 29 to October 1, according to Élections Québec.

Advance voting takes place on September 27 and 28, from 9:30 a.m. to 8 p.m.

The weight of advance voting

In 2022, 1.5 million voters, or 24.4%, chose advance voting, La Presse reports.

This year, 908 candidates are competing for 127 ridings, the same guide specifies. Their average age is 47.

Those who write average 47. The leader who signs is 57. Those who receive are 18 to 22.

The letter spans three decades.

Election day itself remains the best time to vote, the Élections Québec spokesperson tells La Presse, because there are nearly four times as many polling stations. Nearly 60,000 people are mobilized for the election.

A letter received the week polling stations open on campus arrives at the foot of the ballot box.

And yet the young voter reading it knows no more about where their address came from than the day they opened it.

The letter reaches the ballot box. Its source stays in the shadows.

The next envelope

A system, not a scandal

This letter does not reveal a scandal. It reveals a system.

The law hands your date of birth to the parties. The parties pledge to use it only for electoral purposes. So they can find you by your age.

And you cannot ask them what they know about you.

It is no one party’s fault in particular. It is a lawmaker’s choice. It makes the parties’ work easier. It does not require them to answer to you.

The provincial political parties receive the same list. The Conservative Party is simply the one that showed it, this week, with an envelope.

The signature you cannot see

Does an envelope that knows your exact age owe you the name of the person in that party who holds your date of birth?

The law tells you that person signed a pledge.

It does not tell you the name.

What the parties know about your age, you will not be told.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• Élections Québec — electoral list information given to parties, page consulted September 25, 2026
• Élections Québec — election expenses and the 50% reimbursement, page consulted September 25, 2026
• Statistics Canada — millennials in the Canadian housing market, May 6, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• Journal de Québec — Duhaime’s letter to young voters, September 25, 2026
• LaPresse.ca — the 2026 voter’s guide, September 23, 2026
• LaPresse.ca — a bigger challenge for millennials, May 6, 2026