Nycole Turmel

Nycole Turmel (born September 1, 1942) is a Canadian politician who served as the member of Parliament (MP) for Hull—Aylmer from 2011 to 2015.

In 1977, after she had moved to Alma, Quebec, Turmel began working as an employment counsellor assistant at the federal government's regional Canada Employment Centre.

Turmel credits this experience as inspiring her to become active with her union, saying "I got involved in the union because of the injustices I was seeing."

In particular, she says the clerical and regulatory (CR) employees, most of whom were women, were not being treated fairly.

For example, the CR employees received less overtime reimbursement for meals than did other, male-dominated, employee groups.

It was in 1979 that Turmel was first elected to a position in her union, the Canadian Employment and Immigration Union (CEIU), a component of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), becoming vice-president of the local.

She says that at the time the union was male dominated and "it wasn't easy for women to participate in the union", noting that she relied on the mentorship of other female members.

Over time, Turmel held progressively more senior elected positions at the local and regional level of her union, eventually serving as vice president of the CEIU in the late 1980s.

In 1980, during a difficult round of collective bargaining, the 40,000 Clerical and Regulatory CEIU members went on what Our Times magazine described as the first big strike in the federal government—a strike that did not have the sanction of the union's national executive.

Turmel tells the story as follows:

"Women workers were being told by our union not to take strike action against an unfair employer. The male-dominated leadership at the time was out of touch with the reality faced by CRs in our workplaces. We were outraged by the way the union was treating us, but we were even more outraged at the employer. We took them both on, and we became leaders overnight. To drive our message home, we sent funeral wreaths and cactuses to the union's leadership. But we did a lot more than that in the workplace: we organized and we had fun! We would dress up in all sorts of costumes to greet our clients, and, at key moments, we would all toot our whistles, which would cause quite a storm."

At the time, Turmel was a single parent with three children: two teenagers and a nine-year-old.

She says the strike was a huge challenge because of that.

The workers were predominantly female, with many struggling to support families.

The union leadership eventually accepted the strike, which lasted for 15 days and ended with the workers winning wage increases, bonus payments, and improved parental and family care leave.

After that strike, Turmel became further involved in her union and was elected president of her local in 1981.

She later moved on to the district level and then to the regional level of the CEIU.

One of Turmel's first political fights was around the closure of a military base at Mount Apica in 1989.

She first campaigned to try and save the base and, when it became evident that that was impossible, she lobbied to ensure that displaced employees got a job somewhere else without losing their benefits.

Turmel observed that such layoffs had a significant effect on the affected workers because of economic conditions in the region: "It had a big impact economically for the Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean region. Many of the workers were from that region. It was not like today where it is common to transfer because of a job or if your spouse gets work in another city. It was not easy to find another job in the region."

In 1990, Turmel left Alma and moved to Gatineau in order to take up a new job with her union.

She has resided in Gatineau since.

Turmel is bilingual, speaking English as a second language, and is now married to a British-born Anglophone.

She has three children and nine grandchildren, as well as a brother who lives in Sainte-Marie.

Turmel has an abiding interest in outdoor sports, especially cross-country skiing, tennis, and cycling.

In 1990, she made the decision to run for a national elected position; as part of a pioneering wave of women within the union who were assuming leadership roles, she campaigned for the presidency of the CEIU arguing that "it's time a woman ran the component, and I am ready."

While her campaign for the presidency was unsuccessful, she became the alternate to the national president of the CEIU, and moved to Gatineau.

"I was not fully bilingual, my network was in Quebec and even though my children were grown up it was still difficult," Turmel explained.

A year later she was elected onto the PSAC executive: Turmel became Fourth Executive Vice-President of the PSAC in 1991, serving until 1994, when she became First Executive Vice-President.

Turmel is a long-time trade unionist and served as president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada from 2000 to 2006.

Nycole Turmel was born to Laval Turmel and Emilia Jacques in Ste-Marie-de-Beauce, Quebec, a nearly completely francophone area of Quebec, where she lived until the age of 18.

Her father ran a dairy in the region, Laiterie Turmel, which produced and delivered milk, cream and ice cream.

The family has a history of political involvement; her father served as a city councillor, as did one of her brothers.

At 18, and newly married, she and her husband left her home region of the Beauce to move to Alma, Quebec, for work.

She subsequently had three children and, after separating from her husband, raised them as a single mother.

A member of the New Democratic Party (NDP), Turmel served as the party's interim leader from 2011 to 2012.

Turmel was first elected to the House of Commons of Canada in the 2011 federal election, representing the electoral district of Hull—Aylmer, and became interim leader of the New Democratic Party after leader Jack Layton took a leave of absence in the summer of 2011 for health reasons.

When Layton subsequently died from complications due to cancer on August 22, 2011, Turmel became Leader of the Official Opposition, the second woman to be so appointed.

She held both positions until the selection of Thomas Mulcair in the 2012 leadership election on March 24, 2012.

She was defeated in the 2015 general election.