Minister St-Onge will write the history of the Commons through her parental leave

Photo: Spencer Colby The Canadian Press Canadian Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge poses for a portrait during an interview with The Canadian Press on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024.

Michel Saba – The Canadian Press in Ottawa

Posted September 28

• Canada

A sign that society is changing, Canadian Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge will make history in a few weeks by becoming the first openly lesbian federal minister who, when her wife gives birth, will take parental leave.

“I’m not someone who really likes to talk about myself or my personal life either,” she confides at the outset in an interview with The Canadian Press.

Sitting at a table in the Library of Parliament a few steps from the House of Commons, the minister acknowledges that this is far from being an interview like any other. She says she feels “a mixture of discomfort and, at the same time, gratitude.”

So why did you agree to speak publicly about this parental leave?? “What I’m experiencing is part of a continuum of political decisions and fierce struggles by people who came before me,” she says. “I have a responsibility to continue the fight.”

Pascale St-Onge is smiling as she talks about “the joy” of soon welcoming a baby into her life, “an incredible experience that many humans go through and that some take for granted.” However, for members of the LGBTQ community, it is “a little more complex, […] a way of the cross sometimes.”

Her wife’s pregnancy is going “really well,” she says. The birth is expected “around mid-November, end of November.”

The “timing,” which was not planned, she assures, is therefore almost ideal, given that it will be shortly before the Christmas break.

The minister plans, as a first step, to leave Ottawa to be closer to the place of delivery and work virtually starting in early November. In particular, she will be able to attend debates in the Commons and vote remotely, as well as participate in cabinet meetings and ministerial committee meetings, in addition to making decisions as a minister.

“When the baby is born, I will definitely, for a few weeks, significantly reduce my public presence, but will continue to vote until the House rises,” she says.

Her team had imposed a condition on the interview: that her wife not be identified. The minister will explain that she wants to protect her privacy and spare those she loves from having to endure “those things.”

Those things are the hateful comments, missives and emails she receives from people “who are trying to silence us, to tell us that in Canada this should not be a topic of conversation.” She cannot help but observe the resurgence of homophobic violence in the country.

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Pascale St-Onge was a union leader for a long time before making the leap into politics and being elected a few months later, in September 2021, in the riding of Brome-Missisquoi, in Estrie.

The fight to help people in her community who feel abandoned is fundamentally part of her political commitment under the banner of a party that wants to “see our society progress, be more respectful of differences.”

“The country has reached that point”

Her hands sometimes trembling slightly, it is impossible not to see that she feels the weight of a fight greater than her, of gains made by activists “who have suffered a lot, some have been imprisoned.”

“What I experience, I owe to others,” she summarizes

Tracing this historical canvas, she recounts that in 1969 the government of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the father of the current Prime Minister, decriminalized homosexuality in the country. Two years earlier, after introducing his bill and while he was Minister of Justice, he told journalists that “the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation.”

She talks about purges in the military, the RCMP and the civil service. “People lost their jobs because they were gay,” she says indignantly. Incidentally, she mentions that suicide rates are higher in her community.

In 2005, under the government of Paul Martin, gay marriage became legal. “And I got married this summer,” the minister says.

Since Justin Trudeau came to power, conversion therapy has been banned, gender identity is part of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and the ban on gay men donating blood has been removed.

As if politics is never far away, she points out in passing that “the majority of these choices, if not all of these choices” were made while the Liberal Party of Canada was in power.

Conversely, she does not hesitate to accuse the Conservative Party of Canada currently led by Pierre Poilievre of being composed of the “most retrograde faction” in Canada, “very focused on religious values ​​[…], and which wants to see the country go backwards on certain social progress”, including the right to abortion.

“Outrageous assertions”

Called upon to react, Mr. Poilievre’s office denounced these “outrageous assertions” which “reveal the profound despair” of the Liberals who “lie to divert attention from the misery they have inflicted” on Canadians.

“Progress is accepting that people’s opinions – and parties’ opinions – can change,” insisted one of her spokesperson, Marion Ringuette.

She pointed to Mr. Poilievre’s very first speech as Conservative leader where he declared that in Canada “it doesn’t matter who you love.”

A few months later, he said he wanted to make Canada “the freest country in the world,” a freedom that applies to “everyone, including gays and lesbians.”

That’s without taking into account that during the 2005 vote on gay marriage, a quarter of Liberals voted against it, Ms. Ringuette pointed out. It should be noted, however, that this was the case for 97% of Conservatives, including Mr. Poilievre, who has since changed his mind.

In addition to Ms. St-Onge, Justin Trudeau’s cabinet is made up of another minister from the 2SLGBTQI+ community, namely Alberta’s Randy Boissonnault.

Several current MPs are also from this community. According to a review by The Hill Times, including New Democrats Blake Desjarlais and Randall Garrison, Liberals Rob Oliphant and Seamus O’Regan, and Conservative Eric Duncan.

Conservative MP Melissa Lantsman is the only other openly lesbian MP.

In March 1987, former Deputy Prime Minister Sheila Copps became the first MP in Canadian history to give birth while in office.