On the CEO’s side – October 2025

FIGO Fever!

Cape Town is a magnificent city, and it will be decked out in its finest to welcome more than 5,000 delegates this week. Canada will be well represented, and we look forward to sharing the highlights of this congress with you as take it all in. FIGO 2027 in Montreal will allow us to remind the world that Canada will never back down on women’s sexual and reproductive rights. Quite a challenge when we see what is happening south of the Canadian border. We will also use our booth to promote our new international membership status, which will officially begin in January 2026. This will allow us to share our educational tools around the world.

We have started working on lists of volunteers to speak to the media and to help us prepare our representations across the provinces and territories because, despite our advocacy federally, free contraception seems to be being pushed back onto the provinces and territories for responsibility to act. We will modify our strategies, but there is no doubt that we will not be giving up.

We are very pleased to report that membership numbers continue to rise. We need to know what you would like us to include in your educational activities. Additionally, we are currently exploring how to include support activities to prevent burnout and to make life easier for our colleagues who are struggling to balance their work and family responsibilities.

There is a lot of work to be done, but our team’s creative energy is a driving force that allows us to move forward on all these issues.

In closing, it is RSV vaccination season. What an injustice for families where vaccination is not free in Canada. I invite you to watch the presentation given by Dr. Marc Lebel, an infectious disease specialist, at the FMC du Québec, or to read the CMAJ article on the spectacular results of 2024! More than 1,200 families did not have to endure the horror of seeing their newborns hospitalized for three weeks with severe bronchiolitis.

See you at the Ontario CME in Toronto in November!

Diane

Dr. Diane Francoeur 
FRCSC, MHCM, ICD.D
Chief Executive Officer