Suzanne Blais-Grenier

Suzanne Blais-Grenier was a Quebec Progressive Conservative MP who had served as Minister of State for the Environment in Brian Mulroney's first cabinet — the first woman to hold an environment portfolio in Canadian federal politics. She was dropped from cabinet in 1985 after a controversy over her travel expenses (a $23,000 trip to Europe that included her husband), and her relationship with the party deteriorated steadily. By September 1988, she was sitting as an Independent, having been effectively frozen out of the caucus. Her case became an early example of the expense scandal dynamics that would later become a recurring pattern in Canadian politics.

Blais-Grenier did not run in the November 1988 election. Her brief ministerial career and subsequent exile illustrated Mulroney's willingness to jettison cabinet members who became political liabilities. She had been part of the record-breaking 1984 Conservative sweep of Quebec that gave Mulroney his massive majority. After leaving politics, she returned to private life in the Rosemont district of Montreal.