Hon. Lucie Pépin:

Honourable senators, I want to thank you very much for your tributes. As you can see, I am moved by some of the things you have brought up that I had completely forgotten about.

To me, it is very moving to listen to you. Today, I speak with a heavy heart because it is never easy to leave a place to which you have devoted 14 years of your life. It is even more difficult to leave behind colleagues you enjoyed working with and enjoyed seeing every day.

I want to sincerely thank all of you for your cooperation. Each and every one of you has contributed in your own way to making my time in the Senate useful, instructive and pleasant.

Upon leaving, many of our Senate colleagues have focused on this great Senate family. The administrative and support staff and the security staff are a group I have grown attached to and we like and respect one another.

To all those wonderful people, I reiterate my affection and my gratitude for their dedication.

My thanks go to the people of my senatorial designation of Shawinegan. They allowed me to play my role as senator without making me feel as though I had to compete with the member of the House at any given time. I am proud to have represented them.

I can assure the person who takes over this role in the district of Shawinegan that it is a wonderful, beautiful area.

I want to thank the various members of my staff for their professionalism and their loyalty to our shared ideal of social justice.

I mention Momar because I would not have been as brilliant in committee; Stéphanie, my right-hand woman; Yina, my smile of the day, as well as Évelyne and Marie-Ève.

Honourable senators, I realize that I am about to turn a page in my life, one that has been open for nearly 50 years, when I became an activist of necessity.

This may come as a surprise, but the education I received from the nuns indirectly led me to an active political life. I received my education from the Sisters of the Presentation of Mary and the Sisters of Sainte-Anne, but the Grey Nuns trained me as a nurse.

The strength, wisdom and solidarity of these nuns influenced me from a young age. They showed me how to become involved and serve others.

I want to thank them for having made me understand and appreciate the importance of compassion and solidarity.

I was certain that being a nurse would be enough to make me useful and help others. But that was not the case. I would quickly become an activist for gender equality.

I had always felt mothers were being wronged. They often had no choice about pregnancy.

This was when women gave birth at home. Medicare came into existence after I finished my training as a nurse. At that time, I often gave my name to a doctor who would call me at night or on the weekend and say, "I have a patient," — because I am from St-Jean d'Iberville — "who is in the countryside or in Mont-Saint-Grégoire and who just called to tell me that she is about to give birth to her first, fifth or tenth child." At that time, French-Canadian families had 12 or 14 children. The doctor would ask me to go and get the patient ready before he arrived.

So, I would drive to the patient's home even though I did not have my driver's licence. By the time the doctor arrived, the woman had inevitably given birth. However, we often had to put the patient and her baby into the back of the doctor's car and the doctor would take her to the hospital because she was hemorrhaging.

In those days, women clearly had no control over their lives since they did not even have a say in their own reproductive matters. A woman who can bring a pregnancy to term and give birth to a baby can certainly sign her own medical consent forms. Every time a woman had to have an operation, whether it was to remove her appendix or to give birth, the husband had to sign. I did not think this was right. And even when the newborn had to undergo surgery, the father had to sign even though it was the woman who had carried the child. I wondered, "Why can she not sign?" I was told, "I am sorry. It is the father, the husband, who has the rights." These events caused me to want to change this state of affairs.

The nursing profession opened my eyes to these obvious facts. I joined forces with several other people who were equally motivated to correct these injustices. Our combined actions produced significant results. During this period, and with Dr. Lise Fortier, the first female obstetrician-gynaecologist in Quebec, I opened the first family planning clinic. That was in 1966, when it was against the law, but above all, against the Catholic religion. I can assure you that the priests were not very happy about this and spoke out against it, but that did not change a thing.

In 1969, when family planning clinics were legalized, I opened clinics across Canada, in all university hospitals from Newfoundland to British Columbia.

In my opinion, birth control formed the basis of the evolution of the status of women in Canada. As we all know, however, Canada has been without any legislation to prohibit elective abortion since 1991, when the Senate defeated Bill C-43. Rest assured, honourable senators, that I will always have enough energy to convince you not to meddle with the termination of pregnancy legislation.

The progress achieved since my frustrating days as a nurse prompted me to work actively and full time for women's rights.

I then had the opportunity to work in jobs in which I could make a difference. Specifically, I think of the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women, through which we went head-to-head with Prime Minister Trudeau to get women's rights enshrined in the Constitution. What a beautiful time that was.

My position of member of Parliament allowed me to be at the centre of the action and to directly influence the legislation that would affect women and children. We passed legislation on child care services, but we still needed to pass a very important piece of legislation concerning abused women. It was illegal to beat one's neighbour, male or female, although a husband had the right to beat his wife because that was considered a private matter. Thus, police were often faced with situations in which they could hear screams coming from inside a house in front of which they were standing, but they were powerless, because they did not have the right to intervene. One of my first missions as an MP was to work on drafting a bill to prevent violence against women. Fortunately, abusing one's spouse is now illegal.

My transition from nurse to member of Parliament happened naturally. And if I may say so, I think we do not listen to nurses enough. There is a convergence between the work of nurses and the work of politicians. Both nurses and politicians are open to others. They are there to serve. They take care of others and want to help them. Nurses, like politicians, advocate for the needs and rights of the public.

After my time in the House of Commons, where I fought for greater equity for women, I ended up in the Senate after a short break.

In the Senate I found women and men who were just as committed. Our life experiences and our concerns are different, but we are all determined to improve the daily lives of Canadians.

In the Senate, and also in the House of Commons, I did my best to have social justice incorporated into the laws that govern our country. Many people feel marginalized in our society, and I believe I have done my best to give them a voice.

I hope I have contributed to building a more balanced society. I leave it to history to determine what was successful and what was less successful.

In my role as a senator, I have had the opportunity to discover the courage of military spouses. They became my heroines and heroes. I was able to work with them to ensure that their valuable contributions to the vitality of the Canadian Forces is recognized and that their quality of life is constantly being improved. As I am fond of saying, the reason the members of our military can do such a good job is because their wives and husbands are standing behind them supporting them.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the ministers of defence we have had since 2000. Each of them made it easy for me to have access to military bases. I was supported equally well by Liberal Ministers Eggleton and Graham and Conservative Ministers O'Connor and MacKay. I believe this is proof that non-partisan working relationships still have a role in this place.

Contributing to society is like working on a puzzle. The more we work together, the faster it goes.

Honourable senators, I would once again like to emphasize my hope that you will work alongside the military authorities who work so hard to adequately support the families of members of the Canadian Forces. I am convinced that I can count on you. In fact, I believe that two of my fellow senators may be ready to take on the role.

On another issue, I have spent much time on an issue that I hope you will continue to pursue, namely, the representation of women in politics.

The time has come to correct this democratic deficit. Canadian women are having difficulty reaching a critical mass in our political institutions. The equal participation of women in the decision-making process should not simply be demanded as a matter of justice; it should also be seen as a necessary condition for women's interests to be taken into account.

Violence against aboriginal women throughout Canada is an intolerable reality. This human rights crisis needs more attention.

Honourable senators, young people are the future of a country. They are also part of its present state. The role of our youth in building a dynamic and prosperous country is vital.

I have met quite a number of young people during these past 14 years. I find our youth to be a very active group with a heightened awareness of social justice, peace, human rights, health and education. Our young people are talented. They have ideas, skills and energy to spare. The group of Senate pages made that very clear last Wednesday at the Speaker's annual barbecue.

As parliamentarians, parents and mentors, we must continue to elicit the opinions of our young people and to take them seriously. We must ensure that their ideas and opinions are heard. Naturally, it is up to them to speak out at the right time and in the right place.

My dear colleagues, once again the legitimacy of the Senate and the effectiveness of our work are being questioned. This is nothing new. These subjects were being debated when I first entered the Senate, and I see that the debate is ongoing. In fact, some political observers believe that Senate reform is one of the most constant elements of Canadian politics. These debates must not keep us from making a valuable contribution to our parliamentary system.

Of course, entire parts of our work go unnoticed because they take place off camera and far from journalists' microphones. Journalists scour our expenses, but they should be doing the same for our work, and more often.

The Kirby and Keon reports on health and mental health received a lot of coverage, yet the Senate produces quality reports quite regularly.

I am leaving with a heavy, but happy, heart. It was an honour to have served in this upper chamber in which Canadians discuss their choices as a society. It was truly a very rewarding experience that gave me the opportunity to appreciate the wealth of talent that our country has to offer.

If Prime Minister Stephen Harper had extended the privilege of consulting me with regard to his Senate reform, I would have advised him to extend the retirement age to 80. However, I am under no illusion; I know I will not have the opportunity or the courage to propose such a thing to him.

Honourable senators, I wish you health and happiness for the rest of your working lives. And who knows, perhaps someday we will see one another at the Saint-Tite western festival in the Mauricie region, which is part of my district. I invite you to experience this event in my senatorial designation at least once in your lifetime. It is worth it!

Once again, thank you for everything and I hope to have the pleasure of seeing you again.

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