Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu (born February 12, 1949) is a Canadian politician and victim's rights activist, who was appointed to the Senate of Canada on January 29, 2010 on the advice of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, representing the province of Quebec under the banner of the Conservative Party of Canada.Boisvenu is the founding president of the Murdered or Missing Persons' Families' Association, which he founded after the 2002 kidnaping, forcible confinement, rape and murder of his daughter Julie.
Boisvenu then began advocating for the rights of victims of crime, especially for the families of murdered or missing persons.
In 2004, he co-founded with three other fathers of missing or murdered women, the association.
In 2005, his second daughter, Isabelle, died in a car accident.
In 2006, the Association that he leads won a battle for the rights of victims of crime with the adoption of Bill 25 by the National Assembly of Quebec.
He retracted the statement after it sparked controversy and later issued an apology "if his comment offended people whose close ones committed suicide".In June 2013, it was reported that a Senate ethics complaint was filed against Boisvenu.
The complaints relate to Boisvenu using his position of senator to influence the clerk of the Senate and another Senator to arrange a job and time off for his assistant, with whom he had a romantic relationship.
Furthermore, objections were raised because of Boisvenu's six-month delay in complying with a previous ethics order.In June 2014, Senate ethics officer Lyse Ricard found that Boisvenu had acted inappropriately by renewing his assistant's contract while the two were involved in a relationship, and that he also violated the code by promising her a two-week period of sick leave between jobs.
He then contacted Senate clerk Gary O'Brien and Senate leader David Tkachuk in a bid to have the time off counted as sick leave and not vacation time.
However, Ricard concluded that Boisvenu was responsible for "an error of judgment made in good faith" and did not recommend he be sanctioned.
In 2012, there were media reports that, after his divorce, Boisvenu continued to charge the Senate for $20,000 in out-of-town living expenses, even though he had left his home in Sherbrooke, Quebec, and was living in Gatineau, Quebec.Boisvenu resigned from the Conservative caucus in June 2015 after learning that he is the subject of an RCMP investigation into his expense claims.
He was readmitted to the Conservative caucus on November 22, 2016 after the RCMP decided not to lay charges against the Senator.He is a member of far-right Facebook groups Canadian Coalition of Concerned Citizens (C4) and Yellow Vests Canada, and appeared on Gilbert Thibodeau's far-right YouTube channel Le Stu-Dio.