Board of Directors

After serving as secretary general of the FTQ from 2010 to 2013, Daniel Boyer was elected president during the organization’s 30th convention in November 2013.

Born in Lachine in 1958, Daniel Boyer has been a member of the Fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses du Québec since 1978. He was, in turn, vice-president and president of his local union, and union advisor to local 298 (FTQ) of the Syndicat québécois des employées et employés de service (SQEES), before becoming secretary general in 1999 and president in October 2007.

A committed union activist, he was involved in demonstrations against the 1982 decrees in the public sector. He then became actively involved in the SQEES-298 (FTQ) before being hired as a union advisor in 1985. He travelled across Québec to defend the members he represented, as an advocate, spokesperson in public sector bargaining, national coordinator of the ambulance sector and coordinator of public sector bargaining for the FTQ. When he became president of the SQEES-298 (FTQ), Daniel Boyer sought new challenges. He worked tirelessly to achieve pay equity for female public sector workers.

Daniel Boyer is First Vice-Chair of the Board of Directors and a member of the Fonds de solidarité FTQ Executive Committee.

He also serves on the Executive Committee of the Canadian Labour Congress and on the General Council of the International Trade Union Confederation.

He is a member of the Comité consultatif du travail et de la main-d'œuvre (CCTM) and sits on the board of the Commission des normes, de l'équité, de la santé et de la sécurité du travail (CNESST).

Daniel Boyer holds a degree in physical education and industrial relations from Université de Montréal.

Pierre-Maurice Vachon is a well-known personality in the Beauce region where he is both a businessman and a political figure. He has worn several hats, first as CEO, then corporate director, followed by prefect and mayor. To this day, he remains interested in business and management.

Between 1990 and 2003, Mr. Vachon was CEO and chairman of Cartem, a company he helped found in 1977. He served as mayor of Sainte-Marie for 16 years as well as prefect of the Nouvelle-Beauce CMA and president of the Fédération québécoise des municipalités (FQM). Earlier in his career, Mr. Vachon was the manager of production-related administrative services at the family company, Les Gâteaux Vachon, where he remained for 10 years.

Mr. Vachon has been a board member of the Fonds de solidarité FTQ since 2005 and a member of the Turnaround Board since 2004. He also serves on the boards of, among others, SSQ General Insurance Company, P.H. Tech and the Fonds régional de solidarité FTQ – Chaudière-Appalaches.

Pierre-Maurice Vachon holds a business administration degree from Université Laval.

Denis Bolduc is president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) for Québec and a member of the CUPE National Executive Board. He is also a member of the Bureau of the FTQ and has served on the Board of Directors of the Fonds de solidarité FTQ since June 2016.

Holder of a DEC in Arts and Media Technology from Cégep de Jonquière, Mr. Bolduc worked as a radio broadcast journalist at CKCV-AM in Québec City from 1985 to 1986 and as a journalist at Journal de Québec from 1986 to 2011. He was editor of the free daily Média Matin Québec from 2007 to 2008.

Mr. Bolduc was president of CUPE-Québec Local 1450 from 2006 to 2011, president of CUPE-Québec’s Provincial Council for the Communications Sector (CPSC) from March to May 2011, and General Secretary of CUPE-Québec from May 2011 to June 2016.

The members of PSAC-Quebec elected Yvon Barrière as Regional Executive Vice-President in June 2018. In this role, he represents more than 40,000 members and chairs PSAC’s Quebec Council. At the regional level, organizing, education, equity and women’s programs, area councils and directly chartered locals are under his purview.

Yvon is also Vice-President of the Fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses du Québec and a member of the Fonds de solidarité FTQ board of directors.

Prior to his election as Regional Executive Vice-President of PSAC-Quebec, Yvon served as Regional Vice-President of the Union of Safety and Justice Employees (USJE), a position he held since 2014.

From 2002 to 2014, Yvon was a correctional programs officer. During this time, he cultivated a reputation for empathy and constructive interventions for the prison community. He is a determined and passionate activist who firmly believes in solidarity, democratic, fair and equitable unionism.

He is actively engaged in the community of his home region of Drummondville, where he volunteers as a sports coach and director of sports associations, and regularly gives of his time to various community organizations.

Yvon holds a bachelor of arts degree and a diploma in administration from Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières.

Driven by the defence of workers’ rights in the construction industry, Éric Boisjoly has built strong ties with the labour movement during his career, which he began as a construction labourer. He subsequently became a crane operator and a journeyman crane operator. A member of Local 791G, which represents some 1,200 crane operator members, he was named site delegate and regional delegate to represent crane operators in the Montréal metropolitan area. Soon after, he was appointed General Manager. In 2011 he became Assistant General Manager of FTQ-Construction and in 2018 his current role of General Manager.

Mr. Boisjoly is also Vice-President of the FTQ as well as a Board member of the Fonds de solidarité FTQ and the Commission de la construction du Québec (CCQ).

From 2015 to 2019, he was a member of the construction industry’s professional training committee (CCQ) and since 2018 has been a member of the FTQ Pension Committee and the CCQ Benefits Committee. In 2013, he acted as negotiator for the collective agreements of the institutional, commercial and industrial sectors. He also represented FTQ-Construction on various round tables, including a jurisdictional dispute resolution committee, a workforce mobility file and a Québec-Ontario agreement.

In addition to a diploma of vocational studies in crane operation from the Commission scolaire des Trois-Lacs, Mr. Boisjoly has also completed several union training courses and training related to pension plans and employee benefits.

Loïc Breton has been President of the Canadian Office and Professional Employees Union (COPE-SEPB - Québec) since 2016. Mr. Breton’s involvement in the labour movement began in 1991 and he has since held various positions within the SEPB, including president of SEPB-574, organizer, union trainer and employer representative on union bodies.

Mr. Breton holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from McGill University.  He has been an employer representative on the SEPB-Québec Pension Committee since 2017. In addition, he sits on the SEPB-COPE National Executive and has worked, among other things, on the development of the investment policy for the Strike and Lockout Benefit and Defence Fund.

Loïc Breton joined the Fonds de solidarité FTQ Board of Directors in September 2020.

Frédéric Brisson has been the General Secretary of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE-Québec) since May 2021. He was President of the Provincial Social Affairs Council from October 2017 to May 2021 and has served on the local executive as Director, Grievance Officer, Vice-President and President.

Active in the labour movement since 2004, Mr. Brisson has held various positions such as vice-president and president and has sat on several committees including the Public Services Negotiating Committee, where he negotiated the 2020-2022 public sector collective agreement for the Fédération des travailleurs et travailleurs du Québec (FTQ). He also negotiated the group insurance plan contracts for the FTQ Intersectoral Parity Committee (Group 6000) for 2019, 2020 and 2021.

Mr. Brisson worked for 20 years as a patient attendant in the operating room of Université Laval’s Québec Heart and Lung Institute. 

Frédéric Brisson joined the Fonds de solidarité FTQ Board of Directors in May 2021.

A graduate in law and industrial relations, Anouk Collet is executive assistant to the national president of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union. She has over 20 years’ experience in bargaining, organizing, training and member services.

Ms. Collet was elected vice-president of the FTQ and to the board of directors of the Fonds de solidarité FTQ in 2013. She is also vice-president of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) as well as a member of various FTQ committees, including education and grievance arbitration.

Anouk Collet is co-chair of Détail Québec, the retail trade labour sector committee. Engaged in the community, she has served on the board of directors of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of Canada since 2012.

Michèle Colpron has been well known in her profession for nearly 30 years and has more than 10 years of international experience. She has been a corporate director since 2012.

During her 12 years at Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, Ms. Colpron was Senior Vice-President, Financial Management, ensuring sound management of the organization’s treasury activities and coordinating financing activities on bond markets. She was also responsible for the organization’s performance measurement for its portfolios and strategies. Prior to that, she was Vice-President, Investment Administration, responsible for the Caisse’s private equity operations, and also served as Vice-President, Finance and Administration, for the private equity portfolios.

Internationally, she served as Chief Financial Officer of Standard Chartered Bank and Merrill Lynch Bank in Switzerland. She started her career in auditing at Ernst & Young, working in Montréal, London and Hong Kong.

She currently sits on the boards of Québecor Inc. and the Infrastructure Bank of Canada and is Vice-Chair of the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC).

Holder of a Bachelor of Business Administration from HEC Montréal, she is a Fellow of the Order of Chartered Professional Accountants and a chartered corporate director.

Ms. Colpron joined the Fonds de solidarité FTQ Board of Directors in December 2012.

Sonia Éthier has been involved in the labour movement for over 25 years. In the course of her work, she has been called upon to manage occupational health and safety, pay equity and public policy issues, as well as inter-union relations, national bargaining and international files.

She began her career as an educator, spending 10 years at the Sorel-Tracy School Board before becoming president of the Syndicat de l'enseignement du Bas-Richelieu, a position she held from 1992 to 2015. In 2018, she was appointed First Vice-President of the Centrale des syndicats du Québec (CSQ) and that same year was promoted to President. She stepped down in June 2021 and is now a corporate director.

Sonia Éthier holds a bachelor’s degree in special education (1982), a certificate in health and safety (1995) from Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières and a certificate in mathematics and science (1988) from Université du Québec à Montréal. Ms. Éthier joined the Fonds de solidarité FTQ Board of Directors in September 2019.

Renaud Gagné is the Québec director of Unifor, Québec’s largest private sector union.

Mr. Gagné’s career in the labour movement began in 1984, when he became a union representative. Over the next 23 years, he built extensive bargaining experience in the pulp and paper and wood processing industries. In 2007, he was elected Vice-President (Quebec Region) of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada. During his tenure, he was confronted with many situations that called for innovative solutions in order to protect jobs, working conditions and pension funds. He also steered complex dossiers involving companies subject to the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act and made numerous representations before the Québec government during the reform of the province’s forestry regime. Upon the founding of Unifor in 2013, Mr. Gagné was appointed Assistant to the Quebec Director.

Mr. Gagné holds a mechanical manufacturing technician diploma. He has been a Board member of Solifor, a forestry asset management firm, since 2009.

Denis Labrèche has over 30 years’ experience in business valuation, financial disputes and M&As in various industries. As a partner at Ernst & Young from 1978 to 2011, he was involved in key mandates and transactions and was frequently called to give expert testimony. He was also tasked with many venture capital mandates for the Government of Québec, Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec and Société générale de financement du Québec. He also acted as financial advisor to large organizations including Provigo, Métro, Rona, Bell Canada and the Canadian Red Cross.

Very active throughout his career, Mr. Labrèche has given speeches, led countless seminars on business valuation and financing and written articles on the topic for the business magazine Commerce and the La Presse newspaper.

Mr. Labrèche has served on the boards of the Canadian Institute of Chartered Business Valuators and of Réseau Capital.

Denis Labrèche is a Chartered Business Valuator (CBV – 1984) and a Chartered Accountant who made the prestigious Honour Roll of the Chartered Accountants 1978 Uniform Exam (UFE).

Dominic Lemieux is the United Steelworkers Québec Director and was Assistant to the Québec Director from January 2016 to March 2020. He previously worked as the union’s North Shore Regional Coordinator.

Following his studies in mining, he began his career in the Abitibi gold mines and then returned to work at Stelco (now ArcelorMittal) in Contrecoeur. He quickly developed an interest in occupational health and safety and became an activist on the USW Local 6951 Executive, which led to his appointment as a USW union representative in 2008. Mr. Lemieux travelled throughout Québec as a member of the Steelworkers’ organizing team.

He also has led major bargaining with multinationals such as Rio Tinto, Alcoa, Lafarge, ArcelorMittal, Glencore and many others.

He holds a certificate in health and safety from Université de Montréal and completed the Harvard University Trade Union Program.

He chaired the FTQ Youth Committee from 2007 to 2009 and played a key role in a determined campaign that led to a ban in 2018 on two-tier pension and benefit plans in Québec workplaces.

Mr. Lemieux has served on various boards including Formabois, Bureau de la sécurité privé, Comité paritaire des agents de sécurité du Québec, CSMO Mines, Fonds régional de la Côte-Nord and Juripop. He currently sits on the advisory committee of FinTaxi. 

Dominic Lemieux joined the Fonds de solidarité FTQ Board of Directors in January 2020.

Françoise E. Lyon has been President and Managing Partner at DGC International Inc. (formerly DGC Capital) since September 2017 and serves as an expert advisor to several small and medium-sized start-ups and investment committees. She has more than 27 years of experience in senior finance positions at prominent firms such as Merrill Lynch, National Bank of Canada and Bank of America.

Ms. Lyon was appointed Chair of the Board of Trustees of the National Gallery of Canada by the Government of Canada in December 2017 and was named Chair of the Association of Québec Women in Finance in October 2018.  She is currently a Board member of the International Women’s Forum Canada and served on the Board of the Washington-based IWF Leadership Foundation for 10 years, including 2 years as Chair. She chairs the Board of the IWF Global Endowment, also in Washington.  She is the Ambassadors Chair of CITIZN Canada and a Board member of Bopper Music and Ecologyst in British Columbia.

Holder of a Bachelor of Business Administration from HEC Montréal and a Certificate in Public Relations Management with honours from McGill University, Ms. Lyon also completed management specialization courses at the University of Bath in England and through an exchange program with the IPSAJE Institute in Havana, Cuba. She has held the professional designation of Chartered Director since 1996 and has several specialized courses and accreditations in the financial industry.

Françoise E. Lyon joined the Fonds de solidarité FTQ Board of Directors in July 2021.

Active in the labour movement for 35 years, Sylvie Nelson made history in October 2017 by becoming the first woman to be elected as president of SQUESS-298 (FTQ). At the same time, she was appointed FTQ vice-president representing the Service Employees International Union (UIES).

Ms. Nelson began her career as an aide in a Laval rehabilitation centre for physical and intellectual disabilities. Her interest in and concern for this clientele led her to become a specialized educator.  Over the years, she demonstrated a keen commitment to labour activism and was especially active on her local union executive board. She was president of her base unit for over 25 years and was elected member of two provincial public sector bargaining committees, serving as technical representative in two major files:  salary relativity and pay equity.  

In 1997 Ms. Nelson was hired by SQEES-298 member services as an advisor and in 2010 became a coach in the training department. Appointed secretary general in 2011, she assumed responsibility for the training department, political action committee and intercultural and mobilization committee, as well as management of administrative staff. In 2016 she was elected FTQ vice-president representing women in the FTQ.

Throughout her career, Sylvie Nelson has always been known for her activism and dedication to advancing the cause of women, particularly as regards their living standards and working conditions.

 

 

Jean-Claude Scraire is an independant consultant in strategic development. Since 2002, he has worked for different organizations and businesses in Asia, Europe and Québec.

Mr. Scraire previously worked for 22 years at the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec where he served as Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer from 1995 to 2002. He also held various positions in Québec public administration from 1974 to 1981, including at the Ministère de la Justice.

Committed to economic development and strongly believing in the importance of entrepreneurship while respecting the local communities, Jean-Claude Scraire has recently chaired the board of directors of Investissement Québec and the Fondation de l’entrepreneurship.

Member of the Barreau du Québec since 1970, Mr. Scraire is also a member of the Fondation de l’entrepreneurship and the University Club.