1. Pauline Marois was instrumental in crafting policies to end confessional school boards in the public education system, she restructured the tuition system in post-secondary education, implemented a subsidized daycare program, instituted pharmacare and parental-leave plans and slashed the Quebec deficit under Premier Bouchard's "deficit zero" agenda.
Pauline Marois's party was defeated 19 months later in the 2014 Quebec general election, an election that she herself had called.
Pauline Marois was born at Saint-Francois d'Assise Hospital in Limoilou, a working-class neighborhood of Quebec City.
Pauline Marois was raised in a small two-story brick house built by her father in Saint-Etienne-de-Lauzon, a village now amalgamated with the city of Levis, facing the provincial capital on the south shore of the Saint Lawrence River.
Pauline Marois has recalled that her father was sympathetic to the ideas of the Social Credit and the Union Nationale party; he kept current with the news and even bought the family a television set in the early 1950s.
Pauline Marois first attended the small parish school in nearby Saint-Redempteur, where Marois recalls that she excelled in French, history and geography, developed an interest for reading and received numerous books as prizes for her academic achievements.
Pauline Marois was active in school clubs and describes herself as a good student, although she failed her English and Latin classes, momentarily putting her place in school in jeopardy.
At the time, Pauline Marois recalls, she was more interested in the condition of the poor and in international issues than other issues such as the status of the French language or the Quebec independence movement.
Pauline Marois volunteered with the Parti Quebecois, delivering barbecue chicken to election workers on election day in 1973.
In November 1979, Lise Payette, the minister responsible for the condition of women, got Pauline Marois to join her office as chief of staff.
Pauline Marois was appointed as vice-chair of the Treasury Board in September 1982 and was promoted to minister of labour and income security, and minister responsible for the Outaouais region at the end of 1983.
Pauline Marois played a minor role in the turmoil and infighting that shook the Levesque cabinet after the election of Brian Mulroney as the new Canadian prime minister, in the fall of 1984.
Pauline Marois remained in the party's executive until the end of her term, in the spring of 1987.
Less than 10 days later, Parizeau met Pauline Marois and convinced her to return to the PQ national executive as the person in charge of the party platform and asked her to run in the Anjou district, left vacant by Johnson's resignation.
Pauline Marois ran again as a candidate in the Longueuil-based riding of Taillon, which had once been held by Levesque.
Pauline Marois entered Parizeau's shadow cabinet as the Official opposition critic for industry and trade in 1989 and became Treasury Board and public administration critic in 1991.
Pauline Marois was a PQ representative on the Belanger-Campeau Commission set up by Premier Robert Bourassa after the failure of the Meech Lake Accord.
Re-elected for a second term in 1994, Pauline Marois became one of the most important ministers in the successive PQ governments of Premiers Jacques Parizeau, Lucien Bouchard and Bernard Landry.
Pauline Marois was first appointed as the chair of the Treasury Board and the minister of family in the Jacques Parizeau government.
Pauline Marois successfully piloted Bill 109, replacing of confessional school boards by language-based ones implementing a bilateral amendment to the Canadian constitution with the Jean Chretien's Liberal government in Ottawa in 1997.
Pauline Marois introduced a 5-dollar-a-day subsidized daycare program in 1997, which proved popular with working families.
Pauline Marois quickly started to organize her leadership bid following the PQ electoral defeat of 2003.
Pauline Marois announced her candidacy in the election for the leadership of the PQ following the sudden resignation of Landry in June 2005.
Pauline Marois vowed to remain active in the PQ, and reaffirmed her confidence in Boisclair's leadership.
Pauline Marois was succeeded as MNA for Taillon by Marie Malavoy.
Pauline Marois was considered a leading candidate to replace Boisclair, especially following federal Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe's withdrawal from the race.
On May 11,2007, Pauline Marois announced that she would run again for leader of the PQ for the third time.
Pauline Marois herself broke with tradition when she campaigned for a PQ candidate in a by-election against Liberal party leader Robert Bourassa in 1985, as did PQ leader Rene Levesque.
Immediately after being named the new leader of the PQ, Pauline Marois conducted a major shuffle of the shadow cabinet.
Lemieux was offered the position of caucus chair by Pauline Marois, but refused to indicate her disagreement and furthermore stated her intention to resign her seat in Bourget.
Pauline Marois stated that the project of holding a referendum on sovereignty would be put on hold indefinitely, indicating that this would not be her main objective.
Pauline Marois nevertheless added that she was open to the idea of structural changes to the school boards.
Pauline Marois thus became the first woman to be elected leader of the Official Opposition in Quebec.
Pauline Marois is the sixth woman to serve as the premier of a Canadian province.
Pauline Marois's party won 54 of the 125 seats in the National Assembly, as a minority government.
On September 10,2012, a civic funeral was held for Denis Blanchette where Pauline Marois attended along with other important political leaders from Quebec.
At its first meeting, the new Pauline Marois government was quick to honour campaign commitments and cancelled a slew of decisions of the outgoing Charest administration.
The Pauline Marois government suspended most sections of Bill 78, an emergency bill aimed at stopping the 2012 Quebec student protests, cancelled a loan guarantee to restart the Jeffrey asbestos mine in Val-des-Sources and abandoned the Gentilly-2 Nuclear Generating Station refurbishment project.
Pauline Marois laid out an agenda designed to promote "sovereigntist governance" in relations with the rest of Canada, to return Quebec to balanced budgets through higher taxes and debt reduction, to increase the use of French in public services, and to address resource development in Northern Quebec.
Pauline Marois ran as leader of the Parti Quebecois in the seat of Charlevoix-Cote-de-Beaupre.
Pauline Marois's defeat included the surprise loss of her own seat of Charlevoix-Cote-de-Beaupre by 882 votes to Caroline Simard, whom supporters of Marois had widely accused of being a Liberal Party paper candidate.
Pauline Marois's defeat marked the end of a 20-year hold on the district.
On October 18,2007, Pauline Marois proposed Bill 195, the Quebec Identity Act, which included a requirement that immigrants must learn French to obtain rights, including a putative Quebec citizenship and the right to run in elections at all levels.
Pauline Marois's proposals included more French courses in elementary and secondary schools, a requirement for new arrivals to learn French and for the extension of French language requirements to be applied to small businesses as well as for more power for the Office quebecois de la langue francaise.
In June 2013, Pauline Marois announced her support of the Quebec Soccer Federation's ban on turbans within the federation.
Pauline Marois's stance has received significant criticism for its use of identity politics.
In March 2014, Pauline Marois said on Radio Canada that "there is a risk" associated with radical Islam in Canada.
In March 2014, Pauline Marois was accused of antisemitism by The Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs surrounding the statements made by party member Louise Mailloux.
Pauline Marois involved herself in international affairs in her first months of office.
Pauline Marois expressed her concerns with the withdrawal of Canadian aid agencies and funding of Africa among other places, consistent with her party agenda to increase Quebec's participation in international aid and maintain a "pacifist army" in an independent Quebec.