As Heritage Minister, up in opposition to Large Tech, Pascale St-Onge steps into a job she’s been rehearsing for
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Pascale St-Onge has lived a number of lives. A decade in the past, the Liberal MP and now former sports activities minister, dyed her hair black and have become a self-taught bass participant for Mad June, an all-lesbian various rock band from Montreal described as a combination between Think about Dragons, The Ramones and Arcade Fireplace. She additionally acted because the band’s supervisor.
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She went on to function president of Quebec’s largest union for the media and cultural sectors, pushing Justin Trudeau’s Liberals to halt the media business’s speedy decline and ship what would ultimately grow to be the contentious On-line Information Act, previously often known as C-18.
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And when Hockey Canada executives appeared ready to grind their manner by a nationwide intercourse scandal that illuminated long-running issues with the nation’s nationwide sport, St-Onge minimize their federal funding and efficiently inspired others to do the identical, successfully forcing change.
Promoted to heritage minister in Justin Trudeau’s cupboard overhaul on Wednesday, St-Onge might be taking up from predecessor Pablo Rodriguez (who was shuffled to the Transport Ministry) in main the federal government’s pitched battle with Large Tech, which has most just lately seen Fb-owner Meta and Google each saying they are going to block Canadian information from their platforms slightly than undergo Liberals’ laws forcing them to barter offers with information organizations.
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The struggle over income sharing with information publishers and authorities regulation of streaming, in addition to policing social media content material, is acquainted turf for St-Onge who has spent a lot of her public profession warning in regards to the risk she believes digital applied sciences pose to Canadian tradition and journalism.
At a press convention on Wednesday, St-Onge mentioned she’s going to make sure that the media and cultural business thrives, and recommended her predecessor Rodriguez for passing each the On-line Information Act and the On-line Streaming Act, which goal to control digital tech firms.
St-Onge mentioned she intends to strategy the battle with tech giants the identical manner Rodriguez did.
“My purpose goes to be the identical, which is to guarantee that our media business and our cultural industries thrive, and to guarantee that we now have information and journalism in order that the inhabitants may be well-informed and our democracy is powerful.”
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“The minister has, by most accounts across the Hill, dealt with some powerful recordsdata. And I feel it’s apparent that she’s a transparent, concise, competent communicator at a time when persons are rejecting speaking factors or political rhetoric an increasing number of,” mentioned Greg MacEachern, a former Liberal staffer and principal at KAN Methods.
Rodriguez additionally had phrases of reward for the minister changing him: “I’m wanting ahead to seeing what Pascale can obtain as a result of she’s completely wonderful and he or she’s going to do an awesome job.”
St-Onge, 46, just isn’t one to hunt out the highlight. An intensely personal particular person, she prefers to champion social justice points or showcase others slightly than discuss herself. However when she does communicate out, it’s normally due to some perceived injustice she needs to repair.
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“I come from a comparatively modest background and I’ve all the time been delicate to and anxious by the truth that sure folks have alternatives that others don’t,” she mentioned in an interview. “After I see inequalities or people who find themselves discriminated in opposition to, it actually will get to me.”
St-Onge grew up in St-Eustache, a suburb north of Montreal. She was an athlete in her youthful years, a aggressive swimmer from age six to 17, earlier than switching to volleyball in school and college. She graduated from the College of Quebec in Montreal in literary research and obtained a certificates in journalism from the College of Montreal, however by no means labored as a reporter, as an alternative touchdown within the gross sales division at Montreal-based newspaper La Presse.
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When she wasn’t working her day job, St-Onge was both taking part in the bass or reserving venues throughout Quebec and Ontario for her band. In an interview with Xtra Journal, the previous band members mentioned the concept of forming Mad June sprung from a “half-joking dialog” throughout a trip on the seaside. St-Onge was the one non-musician of the group however at some point picked up a bass and realized to play by ear.
Though Mad June was an all-female, all-lesbian band, St-Onge was fast to reject the labels in an interview with La Presse. “Usually, folks will suppose that the truth that we’re all ladies is an idea, however no person would have this thought for a boy band,” she mentioned.
Music producer and songwriter Jeff Dalziel noticed Mad June at one in every of their exhibits in 2012 and labored carefully with the band for about three years. “Pascale was like Mother,” he mentioned of the dynamic between band members. She was “superb at protecting a decent ship, from every part from financials, to bookings, to travels, to herding the cats”, he mentioned, and “was simply straightforward to work with, which isn’t quite common in our business.”
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Mad June would go on to launch three singles however no album earlier than they stopped touring. The explanations for disbanding are unclear, however Dalziel mentioned “it was a really powerful time” within the music business and it was “financially laborious” for artists to do their work whereas balancing a day job.
“I really feel sorry for them that it didn’t work out,” he mentioned. “I feel they might have gone to larger and higher issues had the business been extra wholesome on the time.”
St-Onge was already on her strategy to changing into president of the Nationwide Federation of Communications and Tradition (FNCC-CSN), representing 6,000 members within the communications and cultural industries throughout Quebec. It was an important, and never very wholesome time for the media business, both.
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She was elected to the highest job on the finish of 2015, shortly after Justin Trudeau’s Liberals first got here to energy. On the receiving finish of the union’s assaults in opposition to the Liberal authorities was Melanie Joly, then-minister of Canadian Heritage. St-Onge recurrently lambasted Joly in regards to the exemption made for on-line streaming big Netflix in gathering the federal gross sales tax — the “Netflix tax” — and was pushing for extra support for the media sector, going so far as accusing the Liberals of letting the business die due to its inaction.
I believed that the federal government had an extended strategy to go when it comes to understanding the impression of digital platforms on the cultural and journalism sectors
Pacale St-Onge
St-Onge mentioned her assaults in opposition to Joly had been by no means private, and that she merely disagreed with the federal government’s place on the time. “I all the time admired her as an individual, regardless that I believed that the federal government had an extended strategy to go when it comes to understanding the impression of digital platforms on the cultural and journalism sectors and convincing the federal government to play a job in that,” mentioned St-Onge.
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In 2017, Vincent Marissal, who had just lately left journalism to affix a public relations agency, was tapped by the FNCC-CSN to assist St-Onge convey her messages to Ottawa. “She is somebody who isn’t loud, however who’s crystal clear in her calls for,” he mentioned. “She was not confrontational, simply very trustworthy with the ministers, Joly, and all of the others, that in the event that they had been to do nothing, extra newspapers and extra newsrooms would shut.”
Marissal, now a politician for left-wing provincial get together Québec solidaire, mentioned Joly understood the urgency of the state of affairs within the media enterprise however “the fruit was not but ripe” within the federal cupboard on the time to have interaction in a battle with U.S. tech giants.
Charles Côté, former president of La Presse’s info staff, mentioned “there is no such thing as a labour union in Canada that labored tougher than the FNCC beneath Pascale’s management” to persuade the federal authorities it needed to step in to stop Canada’s information business from disappearing.
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In an interview, Joly mentioned that she labored alongside St-Onge behind the scenes to “evolve” her authorities’s place on the matter. By the point the 2019 federal election got here round, most events had been in favour of creating tech giants gather a gross sales tax, even imposing an revenue tax on them.
Joly and St-Onge’s efforts ultimately led to the On-line Information Act, which requires firms reminiscent of Google and Meta to pay Canadian on-line information firms to hyperlink to their web sites. Meta has threatened to ban Canadian media from its platforms in retaliation.
In 2021, Joly was Liberal nationwide co-chair of the federal marketing campaign and was searching for the feminine equal of a Steven Guilbeault, former local weather activist, to grow to be the same advocate for the cultural sector. She considered St-Onge, who was on the finish of her mandate on the FNCC.
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Earlier than entertaining the provide, St-Onge turned to Guilbeault to ask him if he regretted making the change from activist to politician. His reply? No.
St-Onge ran within the 2021 election and narrowly gained in Brome-Missisquoi, in Quebec’s Jap Townships, by lower than 200 votes. She was instantly requested to serve in Trudeau’s cupboard, changing into Canada’s first overtly lesbian cupboard minister.
To everybody’s shock, together with her personal, she grew to become Minister liable for the Financial Improvement Company of Canada for the Areas of Quebec, and Minister of Sport, two uncontroversial portfolios that normally consist solely of saying excellent news.
The recordsdata that landed on her desk, nonetheless, had been something however regular.
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As quickly as she began on the job, St-Onge needed to cope with the diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Olympic Winter Video games in Beijing, and a name to ban Russian and Belarussian athletes from the 2022 Paralympic Winter Video games after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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Then got here Hockey Canada. The group was beneath intense scrutiny after it was revealed it had reached an out-of-court settlement with a younger lady who was allegedly sexually assaulted by members of Canada’s junior hockey crew in London, Ont., in 2018.
St-Onge introduced final 12 months the federal authorities can be freezing its funding for Hockey Canada so long as the group didn’t adjust to accountability measures — one thing she introduced with out enter from her public servants, revealed Joly.
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“She’s the one who known as the pictures,” mentioned Joly.
St-Onge’s dealing with of the Hockey Canada file, specifically, resonated exterior of the Ottawa bubble. Hockey dad and mom mentioned they felt just like the minister was standing up for them by standing as much as the nation’s most outstanding sports activities group.
“I like the truth that she had the braveness to have the ability to say, ‘that is simply not proper,’ ” mentioned John Ouellette, a hockey dad from Cape Breton. “And I’d say that that acted as a catalyst for different folks to form of examine their very own rules and stand behind the place that she took.”
I like the truth that she had the braveness to have the ability to say, ‘that is simply not proper’
John Ouellette, hockey dad
St-Onge mentioned she needed to put Hockey Canada on the “penalty bench” for overlaying up the allegations with settlement cash. She additionally needed to slim the difficulty to what it was: sexual abuse.
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“For me, there was no different strategy to act. As a minister, as a public determine, as a frontrunner, after we hear issues like that, we now have to sentence them and name a spade a spade,” she mentioned.
There have been different challenges thrown her manner, together with rising calls from former and present athletes, in addition to her predecessor Kirsty Duncan, who served as Minister of Science and Sport from 2015 to 2019, to carry a nationwide inquiry into abuse in sports activities.
St-Onge has mentioned she is dedicated to launching an investigation, however mentioned “it’s a matter of what and the way” that may occur.
Shauna Bookal, who works as supervisor of fairness, variety, inclusion and scholar expertise at Ontario College Athletics, mentioned she has met a number of politicians through the years and was “very skeptical” when she first met St-Onge because the nation’s new Sport Minister in early 2022.
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“She’s totally different,” mentioned Bookal. “She didn’t simply come for the photo-op, she didn’t come simply to say she was there. She truly listened after which she would comply with up.”
As an overtly homosexual lady, St-Onge is aware of how far the rights of sexual minorities have progressed in current a long time. However she has additionally seen that issues have began to slip in Canada the previous 12 months, and that is one subject that makes her voice break.
“It scares me,” she mentioned in a uncommon second of vulnerability, earlier than shortly reverting to a proof of the consequences of social media’s algorithms and why society has grow to be extra polarized, a file she is clearly conversant in.
“The weakening of our information media, the truth that our newsrooms have much less and fewer reporters, have an effect on the standard of the data, on the capability of individuals to have entry to verified content material and correct journalistic work,” she mentioned.
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“On the identical time, you might have these echo chambers which are amplified, which are feeding into a number of disinformation and adverse leaders, and their statements are legitimized by political leaders afterwards. That’s one of many explanation why I made a decision to get into politics in 2021,” she continued.
St-Onge stays satisfied that these on-line echo chambers don’t signify the vast majority of Canadians. “The massive majority of Canadians, I’m satisfied, don’t need to see human rights scaled again, don’t prefer to see division, hate and nervousness, and don’t need to reside in that surroundings,” she mentioned.
As she pivots from scrapping with hockey bosses to staring down the tech sector, St-Onge might be wanting once more to make sure she’s the one calling the pictures.
With extra reporting by The Canadian Press
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