Monique Bégin PC CC FRSC (March 1, 1936 – September 8, 2023) was a Canadian academic and politician.
Bégin was born in Rome to a Canadian-born sound engineer Joseph Lucien Bégin (1895–1964) and Belgian-born accountant Marie-Louise Vanhavre (1906–1967)[1][2] and raised in France and Portugal before emigrating to Canada at the end of World War II. She received an MA degree in sociology from the Université de Montréal and a PhD degree from the Sorbonne. She described her early life in Montreal as challenging, but credited community groups and her childhood role as a Girl Guides of Canada member as "sav(ing) her life".[3]
In 1967, Bégin became executive secretary of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women, which published its report in 1970. She won election to the House of Commons of Canada as a Liberal candidate in the riding of Saint-Michel in Montreal in the 1972 election. Bégin, Albanie Morin and Jeanne Sauvé, all elected in 1972, were the first women ever elected to the House of Commons from Quebec.
Bégin was appointed to the Canadian Cabinet by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau as Minister of National Revenue from 1976 to 1977, and served as Minister of Health and Welfare from 1977 to 1979 and again from 1980 to 1984 during which she introduced the Canada Health Act in Parliament which was passed by the House of Commons and is still in force today. She declined to run again in the 1984 election and retired from politics.
In 1986, she joined the University of Ottawa and Carleton University as the first joint Ottawa-Carleton Chair of Women's Studies. From 1990 to 1997, she was the University of Ottawa's dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences and continued teaching as a professor emeritus. From 1993 to 1995, she also served as co-chair of Ontario's Royal Commission on Learning with Gerald Caplan.
In 1997, she was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. Bégin served as the Treasurer for the International Centre for Migration and Health.
In 2015, she was a recipient of the Governor General's Award in Commemoration of the Persons Case.[4]
In 2018, she published the memoir Ladies, Upstairs!: My Life in Politics and After.[5]
Bégin was elevated to a Companion of the Order of Canada in 2020.[6]
Monique Bégin died in Ottawa on September 8, 2023, at the age of 87.[7]
There is a Monique Bégin fonds at Library and Archives Canada.[8]