The government agency currently under Minister Maryam Monsef, Women and Gender Equality, formerly the Status of Women, has awarded $1,986,270 in the past 10 years to a feminist group in Quebec called “Federation des femmes du Quebec” (FFQ). Funding was withdrawn in 2010 but resumed under the Trudeau government with $29,880 (2016) to revitalize the feminist movement and $385,067 (2017) to promote diversity and feminist and gender parity in Quebec. The organization also receives a $120,000 annual grant from the Quebec government. FFQ’s membership, according to the Canadian Press (Jan 28, 2020), consists of 600 individual members and 300 associate organizations. The FFQ Trust Fund has charitable status with the Canada Revenue Agency, where it declared $495,170 (2014-2019) revenue from donations, 43% of which were received from “other charities”.
This organization was founded in 1966 under the direction of the well-respected Thérèse Casgrain, who was fundamental in bringing the vote to women in Quebec. Although deeply committed to rights for women, she was also profoundly pro-life.
The organization has come a long way since the time of Mme. Casgrain. In 2018, a resolution was passed by the FFQ declaring that women can freely choose to be prostitutes. As a result of this resolution, a number of the member organizations left the FFQ.
Its current president, Gabrielle Bouchard, who was born a man but who, as an adult, “transitioned” to become a woman, has taken great strides in creating further controversy among its member organizations. In June 2018, she suggested that the government should make vasectomies obligatory as soon as a man has reached 18 years of age. It should be noted, however, that this notion of compulsory vasectomies was recently regarded as reasonable by the media in regard to a bill introduced on February 24, 2020 by an Alabama State Representative, Rolanda Hollis. Her bill would have required a man to have a vasectomy within one month of his 50th birthday or the birth of his third biological child, whichever comes first. Mainstream media outlets in the U.S. lauded this bill because it supposedly “exposed” the hypocrisy of the Alabama legislature, which, in 2019, passed a bill banning all abortions, thus restricting a women’s right to do what she wanted with her body. The argument in support of the vasectomy bill was that it showed that there must be an equal restriction on a man’s body as that which occurs when a woman is denied an abortion. The difference between ending a human life by an abortion and a sterilization procedure was overlooked.
FFQ’s Ms. Bouchard was not done yet; she had other plans to set the organization on fire. In January 2020, she suggested that, since heterosexual relationships were violent, and that the vast majority of them were based on religion, then, it may be time to ban heterosexual relationships altogether. As a result of this declaration by Bouchard, the Quebec government announced that it would be “re-evaluating” its annual $120,000 grant to the organization, claiming that Ms. Bouchard’s statement was “unacceptable” and “lacked respect”. Ms. Bouchard apologized.
The FFQ also stated that its president’s remarks did not represent the position of the organization.
Under Justin Trudeau’s feminist government, federal taxpayers’ money, however, continues to be rolled out for this eccentric organization and its leader, who holds such bizarre views.