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Local MPs Elisabeth Brière, Pascale St-Onge, and Marie-Claude Bibeau meeting with around 40 local mayors to discuss significant municipal issues in August, 2024
By Ruby Pratka
Local Journalism Initiative
When soon-to-be-former Brome-Missisquoi MP Pascale St-Onge picks up the phone, the cries of her four-month-old son can be heard clearly in the background. She briefly puts the phone down to go soothe him before hurrying back. A few weeks from now, St-Onge, 47, who became the first lesbian federal cabinet minister to take parental leave when her son was born, will no longer have to juggle her responsibilities as a politician and a mom – and she’s fine with that.
St-Onge announced in February that she would not seek a second term as MP for Brome-Missisquoi, preferring to focus on her family for the next few years.
“I have no regrets,” she told the BCN. “It was a well-thought-out decision. For the next few years, I really want to be present for him. With the fact that [the Liberals are] going up in the polls, it became obvious that this was the right decision at this time.”
St-Onge, a former communications union representative, has had a busy four years. In October 2021, then-prime minister Justin Trudeau appointed her minister for sport – where she stickhandled reforms to Hockey Canada’s governance in the wake of a sexual abuse scandal before restoring its federal funding – and minister responsible for the Economic Development Agency for the Regions of Quebec at a time when the post-pandemic economic recovery looked precarious. In 2023, she was shifted to the Canadian Heritage portfolio, coming under the national spotlight as the federal government negotiated with Google and Meta to compensate media outlets for lost revenue, renewed funding for local media outlets and took steps toward modernizing and reshaping CBC/Radio-Canada. Earlier this year, when Soraya Martinez Ferrada stepped down to run for mayor of Montreal, Trudeau briefly named St-Onge tourism minister as well.
St-Onge looked back on the 2021 campaign, conducted amid COVID restrictions. “It was such an honour to have been elected in 2021 and have the confidence of the citizens of Brome-Missisquoi,” said St-Onge, a native of Saint-Eustache on Montreal’s South Shore who now lives in Orford. “It was a tight race. When I got elected, we were still in the pandemic. We had to support the tourism sector and make sure there were opportunities for sustained growth … and make sure municipalities had public spaces to gather again. That’s a legacy I’m happy with, that the region will have for years to come.”
As heritage minister, St-Onge’s signature piece of legislation is the Online News Act, which aimed to force web giants such as Google and Meta to negotiate compensation agreements with news outlets. While Google paid $100 million to a consortium of news outlets earlier this year in response to the act, Meta, Facebook’s parent company, got around the act by blocking access to news in Canada on its platforms, opening the door to spoof accounts mimicking Canadian news outlets and presenting false stories as fact. “I wish I could have done a deal with Meta, but they are not [acting as] partners, and that will ultimately end up in court,” St-Onge said. “I’m worried about misinformation, but I’m mostly worried about Meta’s attitude, because they don’t comply, they don’t recognize the legitimacy of governments, which is extremely problematic. Not only did they remove Canadian news, but they fired their fact checkers. The quality of information [on Facebook] is going to keep spiralling down, and people need to be aware of what this means for democracy. A lot of people are exposed to misinformation [inaccurate information], disinformation [deliberate falsehoods] and foreign interference from people using these powerful communications platforms, and that should ring alarm bells.”
For St-Onge, CBC/Radio-Canada is a weapon in the fight against disinformation. “Having a strong public broadcaster that is funded appropriately and stable is not only a question of survival of who we are – of Canadian identity – but of national security and making sure Canadians can turn to their public broadcaster in case of an emergency,” she said. In February, she proposed a major boost to CBC/Radio-Canada funding, and changes to the public broadcaster’s governance and funding structures which she believed would make it less vulnerable to political interference. “Even though I didn’t get to present the [proposal] in the House of Commons, I’m optimistic that the next Liberal government will take it up.”
When the BCN spoke to St-Onge, the Liberal party had not yet announced who would run for her Brome-Missisquoi seat. She said that decision was in the hands of the party, but she did point out specific challenges that awaited her successor in light of the Trump administration’s challenges to Canadian sovereignty. “Everything going on with the United States is going to be super important; we have a lot of industries that import-export into the U.S. We know that a lot of Americans come [to visit the region] and we believe a lot of them are going to support us and support the Canada-U.S. relationship. The future [MP] is going to have to fight for that, to fight for supply management for our farmers and for the renegotiation of [the Canada-U.S.-Mexico free trade agreement].”
“I am proud of the work that we have done with [Sherbrooke MP] Élisabeth [Brière] and [Compton-Stanstead MP] Marie-Claude [Bibeau] with supporting English-speaking communities, implementing the Official Language Action Plan and making sure that Townshippers and other organizations would get support; we made a great team,” she concluded. “I thank everyone in Brome-Missisquoi for their support and their trust over the past few years. Right now, I want to spend time with my family. I’m open to opportunities and I still have a lot of passion for the issues, but I’m in no rush. I haven’t picked up my bass guitar in quite a while, so I may do that.”