“Le communautaire à boutte” : A national movement taking action & demanding to be heard (with Sophie Tétrault-Martel & Caroline Chartier)
In Quebec, community-based nonprofits serve as the essential safety net for society’s most vulnerable. From food security and housing aid to women’s shelters and youth outreach, these organizations support individuals across every stage of life. Yet, behind these critical services lies an unsustainable reality: skyrocketing demand, chronic underfunding, and frontline workers stretched to their absolute limits.
In this episode of Let’s Imagine, host Émilie Pontbriand sits down with two movement spokespersons: Sophie Tétrault-Martel (support worker at Centre des femmes de Longueuil) and Caroline Chartier (deputy director of Centre Roland-Bertrand in Shawinigan). Together, they explore how Quebec’s community sector moved from collective exhaustion to province-wide mobilization through the "Le communautaire à boutte" ("The community sector has had enough") movement.
Key themes & insights
The normalization of burnout and the "vocation trap." For decades, community organizations have operated in isolation, with each team assuming their stress and shoestring budgets were an isolated struggle. Over time, workers normalized widespread burnout.
A central point of the discussion centers on gender equity and feminism. The nonprofit workforce is overwhelmingly female and highly-educated compared to the national average, yet wages remain significantly lower than in other sectors. Sophie and Caroline highlight how society historically relied on religious orders and women’s unpaid labor to provide care. Today, this legacy persists through the concept of "vocation" or "passion," where dedicated workers are expected to accept poor compensation simply because they care about their mission.
"Passion doesn't feed our children or pay the rent. Why should an executive in a private company earn a more than decent salary while an executive [of a community organization] with comparable responsibilities is expected to settle for so much less?" — Caroline Chartier
From a parking lot idea to a province-wide strike. The "Le communautaire à boutte" movement didn't start in a corporate boardroom, it began in a parking lot in Shawinigan following a social justice forum. A tiny group of organizers asked a radical question: Would the community sector have to completely shut down for society to realize its true impact?
What started as a bold pilot project to halt services temporarily in Shawinigan quickly sparked solidarity across neighbouring regions. The organizers leveraged a combination of compelling communications, digital tools, and localized mobilization strategy to turn a regional pilot into a province-wide network. Driven by virtual organizing and peer outreach, the movement scaled rapidly:
- Grassroots escalation: Initial marches in heavy rain drew over 1,600 supporters.
- Historical mobilization: The initiative culminated in a coordinated two-week service strike involving over 1,900 community organizations across all 17 regions of Quebec.
- Mass action: The mobilization brought over 10,000 workers to the steps of the National Assembly in Quebec City.
Redefining the concept of a "strike."
Unlike traditional labour strikes governed by the Labour Code which pit unionized employees against management, this movement was a broad social and service strike.
In many cases, executive directors and boards of directors actively encouraged staff to close doors and join the picket lines. Leadership recognized that current funding models were mathematically unsustainable and chose to temporarily withhold services to show the government what society would lose if these organizations collapsed permanently.
Transforming anger into agency. Beyond policy demands, the movement created a profound psychological shift among workers. By coming together, community professionals reclaimed pride in their work and recognized their collective political power.
While relations with the provincial government remain strained following a lack of concrete commitments, the movement continues to mobilise and consider a range of tactics including the option of an unlimited strike heading into upcoming provincial elections.
Takeaway message for the sector
When asked what advice they would give nonprofit workers across Canada facing similar pressures, the guests summarized their philosophy into two core actions: Dare and Believe.
"As community workers, we support people every day as they reclaim their individual and collective power. We need to say the same thing to ourselves: that power also belongs to us." — Sophie Tétrault-Martel
This episode is available in French. An English transcript is available.
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