As minister of health and welfare in Pierre Trudeau’s government, Ms. Bégin pushed for the creation of the Child Tax Benefit and, despite fierce opposition, the Canada Health Act
It was January of 1973 and Monique Bégin had just been elected to the House of Commons as one of the first three female MPs from Quebec. The 36-year-old sociologist, accompanied by fellow Liberal MP Albanie Morin, bounded into the Centre Block of Parliament, anxious to take their seats in the House of Commons chamber.
“She was a consistently thoughtful, progressive voice on public policy in Canada,” said Bob Rae, the former Ontario premier who’s now Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations. Mr. Rae first met Ms. Bégin in the 1970s when they were on opposite sides of the aisle in the House of Commons. He was a young NDP MP who often challenged the Liberal government in which Ms. Bégin was a leading cabinet minister. Yet they respected each other and developed a friendship that lasted decades.
“She could talk health economics and systems but she could also talk about the real experiences of health care for most people,” Ms. Gray said. Monique excelled academically but the family was often short of cash. When she applied to a Catholic college, the nuns suggested that she work as a server in the dining hall in return for a fee exemption. Her proud mother refused. Instead, Monique attended teachers’ college on a scholarship and ended up in charge of a class of 52 girls. She was 19. The job proved overwhelming and she resigned.
A year later, Ms. Bégin got a call from Marc Lalonde, Mr. Trudeau’s principal secretary, asking her to run for the Liberals. Concerned that “power was dirty,” she hesitated before finally agreeing to seek the nomination in the suburban Montreal riding of Duvernay. Faced with funding constraints, Canada’s free health-care system started unravelling. Doctors began to extra-bill patients and the provinces were imposing user fees. Ms. Bégin decided to act, eventually proposing legislation that would set five principles on the provision of universal health care and threaten to impose financial penalties on provinces that failed to abide by them.
Patrick Fafard, a professor and expert in health policy at University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Social Sciences and the Faculty of Medicine, said the legislation was important because it allowed Ottawa to lay claim to a leading role in the provision of public health care in Canada.
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Tributes pour in for Monique Bégin, 'trailblazer' and former federal cabinet ministerOTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he is mourning the loss of Monique Bégin, a former cabinet minister and academic who died Friday at the age of 87.
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Tributes pour in for Monique Bégin, 'trailblazer' and former federal cabinet ministerOTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he is mourning the loss of Monique Bégin, a former cabinet minister and academic who died Friday at the age of 87.
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Tributes pour in for Monique Bégin, 'trailblazer' and former federal cabinet ministerOTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he is mourning the loss of Monique Bégin, a former cabinet minister and academic who died Friday at the age of 87.
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Tributes pour in for Monique Bégin, 'trailblazer' and former federal cabinet ministerOTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he is mourning the loss of Monique Bégin, a former cabinet minister and academic who died Friday at the age of 87.
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