'When they say I am not enough tough," Pauline Marois says in her odd English syntax, "I am very tough but in a different way."
Her tone suggests that she is wagging an invisible finger in the air as warning to her opponents.
The first female leader of the Parti Québécois, who took the helm of the separatist party in June, 2007, acknowledges that her gender often encourages critics to suggest she is not combative enough.
"I know that," she allows as confirmation of the criticism, but with no display of defensiveness. She smiles tightly, as if the misguided presumptions of her foes give her more power.
"I have my leadership style. I am a woman who works in consensus. I am able to delegate responsibility but I am a woman of action."
Ms. Marois may be a new face to many Canadians, but she has a long and impressive political career that last week brought her some out-of-province accolades. She was honoured in Toronto at the 8th annual Child Care Worker & Early Childhood Educator Appreciation Day. The PQ Leader, who gained the leadership of her provincial party after two previous attempts, is perhaps best known inside and outside of Quebec for the exemplary childcare program she developed in 1997.
Under Lucien Bouchard's PQ government, she launched Quebec's $7-a-day universal child-care system and a generous parental leave program. Her plan took the universal federal family allowance and invested it in affordable child-care services within the province. She also gave working parents options by giving them tax breaks if they chose not to participate in the universal system and keep their children at home with a caregiver or in private daycare centres.
"The federal government should send money to the provinces, and the provinces should decide what they want to have as a network," she says, when asked about the need for successful child-care solutions across the country.
The benefits of her initiatives are evident 10 years later, she says, pointing to increased birth rates in the province, the reduction of child poverty and the rise in tax revenues from working parents that have paid for 40 per cent of the program. The number of places for children in public child-care centres has tripled to more than 200,000, she says.
"At the beginning it was so hard because we had a lot of demands. ... We were not able to offer enough places. We had a lot of criticism and my colleagues, members of my party in the National Assembly, said, 'Oh, we will be defeated over this policy at the next election.' But two years later, we win because of this policy," she says with delight.
Ms. Marois wears her leadership style - a mixture of defiance, confidence and breezy humour - as effortlessly as the fashionable woollen shawl flung over her tailored suit. She enters the Quebec government's offices in downtown Toronto flanked by two female assistants, one of whom, special counsellor Christiane Miville-Deschâsnes, sports a toothpick between her teeth as well as a short, silver bob and an all-black ensemble.
Ms. Marois appears to be changing the housekeeping rules of a party best known for some of its grumpy-old-male leaders.
In her autobiography, Québécoise, published last year, the 59-year-old mother of four describes how she became a separatist after former prime minister Pierre Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act at the height of the October Crisis in 1970. The former social activist and community organizer worked for Jacques Parizeau in the late 1970s, when he was finance minister in René Lévesque's PQ government. She was first elected in 1981 and has since held 15 ministerial titles in the province.
