It’s a hard offer to refuse. However, when Justin Trudeau called Mélanie Joly at the beginning of the fall of 2021 to ask her to become Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Montreal politician first wanted to pass her turn.
“I was doing in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments. So when I was approached, I said no. I thought it was not possible for me to become a mother while being Minister of Foreign Affairs, ”says the main interested party today, sitting at the large dining table in her Montreal apartment.
It goes without saying that she changed her mind. After speaking with her spouse, artist Félix Marzell, her family and her doctor, the MNA for Ahuntsic-Cartierville seized the opportunity offered to her to become Canada’s head of diplomacy and, by extension, the one of the most influential members of the Cabinet of Ministers. All this without putting her desire to have a child on the back burner, with all that entails of medical appointments, taking hormones and calculating menstrual cycles.
” I regret nothing. I think it’s possible to do IVF treatments while being Minister of Foreign Affairs, but it’s an extreme sport, ”she notes 15 months after starting.
And as in all extreme sports, we run the risk of leaving a part of ourselves behind.
Barely a few weeks after accepting the position, Mélanie Joly and her lover had good news. The news they had been hoping for since the very beginning of fertility treatments. The news that was to end the infernal cycle of high hopes and immense disappointments that accompany each cycle of IVF. After six attempts, Mélanie Joly was pregnant.
“Just before Christmas, I had a big miscarriage and it got complicated. I picked myself up at the hospital, she says barely a year later. This is the first time I’ve spoken about it in public. Miscarriages are really taboo. It comes with a lot of guilt. We say to ourselves that we should have done things differently,” she said.
It is to fight this taboo which persists – even if on average one or two out of ten pregnancies end in miscarriage – that she grants us this end-of-year interview and lets us enter her lair, filled with works of art, books and design objects.
“It’s hard, a miscarriage. I lived through it with difficulty, she adds as tears well up in her eyes. I threw myself into work. That’s how I channeled my energies,” says the one who was Minister of Canadian Heritage, Tourism, La Francophonie and Official Languages before taking up her current position.
Work, there has been a lot, a lot in 2022. “Since February 24, when Putin invaded Ukraine, the world has changed. In 2022, we didn’t live a year, we lived a decade [en relations internationales] “said Mélanie Joly at the Council on International Relations of Montreal (CORIM) a few minutes before our one-on-one interview.
PHOTO MARTIN CHAMBERLAND, THE PRESS
Melanie Joly
“The invasion of Ukraine is the biggest threat to global security since World War II. It tests international standards and the institutions we have built since 1945. It is a major concern and it has an impact on our foreign policy and our relations with other states. There are many crises at the same time, Ukraine, the climate crisis and the pandemic. All of this has meant that we are in an extremely difficult situation, ”she summarizes.
And this diplomatic earthquake translates into a proliferation of international and bilateral meetings. And an intensification of collaboration with the closest allies – including the United States, Germany, England and France.
“We have never been so close,” said the minister, who, in one year, has visited 28 countries. “And there are countries where I have been several times. In Germany, at least six times, and in Indonesia, three,” she explains.
In addition to contributing to the management of several crises, the Minister launched a major project to reform Canadian diplomacy and unveiled the Indo-Pacific strategy that had been awaited for years. Skeptics, who had raised doubts when he was appointed, are changing their minds today.
And through it all, we had to keep in mind the calendar of medical appointments. A balancing act. “The fact that I speak openly about in vitro fertilization helps me with my teams, but also with my international counterparts. There were two international congresses in which I was unable to attend and I explained to my colleagues bluntly that I had to do an embryo transfer because I want to be a mother,” says Mélanie Joly. Germany’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Annalenna Baerbock, even agreed to come to Montreal last August to make life easier for her Canadian counterpart.
As she prepares to blow out 44 candles, Mélanie Joly knows that the year 2023 will be as eventful as 2022. “I feel strong and able to handle the pressure. I have been a minister for seven years. I had, ups and downs, and I have resilience in relation to events, ”she notes, referring in particular to the episode of the tax holiday granted to Netflix which had earned her harsh criticism when she was Minister of Canadian Heritage.
On his professional radar screen, there is of course always the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and the nuclear shadow that it casts over the whole planet, but there is also China and its regional ambitions. “What is most worrying is that there are two difficult situations at the same time. The good news is that the West is very united,” she notes, adding that she will continue to work hard to ensure that this solidarity does not wither away.
And she’s not giving up on her personal battle either. “There are breakthroughs in science, I am well surrounded, I have an extraordinary spouse, she lists. I remain optimistic. »