January 12, 2022

I am proud and excited to begin my first mandate as president. I was elected on December 16, 2021 and have been very well received by the great FIQ team. I feel it is important to say that we are a team and that each person on it plays an essential role. This perspective will guide my work. As the old saying goes: ““Alone we go faster, together we go further.”

I am a licensed practical nurse and started working in 2006 at the surgery department in the Chicoutimi hospital. In 2007, I joined my local union team to defend our working conditions. Starting in 2017, I took on the role of regional president. I am the happy mother of a 20-year-old girl who works as a beneficiary attendant and a 14-year-old boy. Work-family-personal life balance is very important to me, and I will continue to fight for this practice to be truly integrated into the health network.

I plan on going to meet you as soon as health measures will allow it. I want to listen to you because I intend to bring a new perspective and new ideas to make your demands heard. Technology will also allow me to talk to you more regularly virtually. I want you to know what is truly going on with the issues that concern you. I am an authentic person. Transparency and honesty are important to me. I expect us to have respectful discussions and debates so that we can move forward in the same direction.

I am very familiar with the issues and challenges we are facing as healthcare professionals, women, and citizens. I am ready to take on these challenges with you because it is together that we will be able to rebuild a work environment where we receive recognition, respect and are heard.

After 22 months in a pandemic, we need to support one another. We must continue to question the government and to put pressure on it so that our work receives proper recognition and so that we can work in a healthy, safe environment.

I wish us all a union year of renewal. Together, united, determined and mobilized.

Julie Bouchard
President