Pascal St-Onge, Canada’s Heritage Minister, will make history in the coming weeks by becoming the first openly lesbian cabinet minister to take paternity leave when his wife gives birth.
“I’m not someone who likes to talk too much about myself or my personal life,” St. Onge said in an interview with The Canadian Press.
A Quebec lawmaker said she decided to speak publicly about parental leave because she has a “responsibility to continue the fight” for LGBTQ2S+ rights.
St-Onge smiled as she talked about the “joy” of soon welcoming a baby into her life, calling it “an incredible experience that many people go through and that some people take for granted.” Ta.
According to San Onge, his wife’s pregnancy is going very well and the baby is due in November. Although unplanned, the timing is almost perfect, she added, as the House of Representatives will sit on a public holiday in mid-December.
St. Onge will leave Ottawa and work virtually starting in early November. She will be able to attend and vote remotely in House of Commons debates, as well as participate in ministerial committee meetings and make decisions as a minister.
“I will definitely be less visible in public for a few weeks after giving birth, but I will be voting until the House of Commons is in session,” she said.
Mr St Onge is not publishing his wife’s name to protect her privacy and protect his partner from the hateful comments and emails the minister receives from people “trying to silence us”. She noted that hate crimes against LGBTQ2S+ people have increased in Canada in recent years.
St. Onge, a longtime union leader, was first elected in 2021 riding in Brome, Mich., in Quebec’s Eastern Townships. She said she was determined to fight for people who feel abandoned and the Liberal Party wanted to see “our society progress and be more respectful of our differences”.
St-Onge argued that Liberal governments have been responsible for many of the advances in the rights of LGBTQ2S+ people in Canada, starting with the decriminalization of homosexuality in 1969 by former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s government. At the time, Prime Minister Trudeau famously quipped, “The country has no place in the people’s bedrooms.”
In 2005, former Prime Minister Paul Martin’s Liberal government legalized same-sex marriage. “I got married that summer,” Ms. Saint-Onge said.
Since coming to power in 2015, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party has banned conversion therapy and lifted a ban on blood donations from gay men.
Mr. Saint-Onge accused Pierre Poièvre’s Conservative Party of being the “most regressive” party in Canada, saying they are “very focused on religious values” on social issues, including abortion. “I want the country to go backwards,” he said.
In response, the Opposition Leader’s Office said Saint-Onge’s “outrageous claims reveal the deep despair of the Liberal Party in its struggle with Justin Trudeau.” “He said he was lying to distract from the misery he faced.” . ”
“Progress means accepting that people’s and party’s views can change,” spokeswoman Marion Ringuette said in an email.
She noted that in Poièvre’s first speech as Conservative Party leader, he said Canada is a country where “it doesn’t matter who you love.”
In June 2023, he told a press conference that he wanted Canada to be “the freest country in the world for everyone, including gays and lesbians.”
Conservative MP Melissa Lanzmann is the only other openly lesbian MP. Employment Minister Randy Boissonneau is the only Cabinet member from the LGBTQ2S+ community.
Other LGBTQ2S+ MPs include Blake Desjarlais and Randall Garrison of the New Democrats, Rob Oliphant and Seamus O’Regan of the Liberal Party, and Eric Duncan of the Conservative Party, according to The Hill Times. .
In March 1987, former Deputy Prime Minister Sheila Copps became the first MP in this country’s history to give birth while in office.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 28, 2024.
