Back in 2018 – After Her Star turn as minister against Donald Trump — In the words of Justin Trudeau, Chrystia Freeland was “exactly the right person to do what she’s doing.”
“Frankly, there probably isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t thank my lucky stars that I was able to convince her to quit her great job in New York and run in an uncertain special election that I wouldn’t even be able to run in. I would guarantee that she would win the nomination and then sit on the side of a third party in the House of Commons,” Trudeau told me at the time.
“She was the kind of person I knew Canada needed to serve in Parliament and preferably in government.”
Freeland, a prominent journalist and author, was the first star candidate scouted by Prime Minister Trudeau and his team to the Liberal Party in 2013. She became early evidence of his leadership. And her writings on economic inequality were perfectly aligned with the “middle class” message that would be central to the Trudeau Liberal Party in 2015.
When the first crisis of Trudeau’s tenure as prime minister arrived in November 2016, the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States, she was promoted to foreign minister and put on the front lines of the response.
After a weakened premier limped out of the 2019 election, Mr Freeland was promoted to deputy prime minister, the first cabinet minister to hold that role in more than a decade, and is the first minister to hold the position in more than a decade. was asked to lead the government’s efforts to It was decisively against Trudeau.
When the prime minister and his first finance minister, Bill Morneau, started looking at things differently in 2020, Freeland took charge of fiscal policy and was tasked with helping lead the federal government out of a once-in-a-century pandemic. I lost it. Her signature accomplishment became a new child care program. And when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Freeland, the daughter of a Ukrainian mother, led one of the Trudeau government’s most important foreign policy efforts on behalf of the ally.
No cabinet minister is truly irreplaceable, and many who served with Prime Minister Trudeau will say they came into office with impressive resumes and did important work during their time in office. But other than Trudeau himself, no cabinet minister has been as central to this government as Freeland.
As a result, her resignation on Monday morning was a devastating blow to the Trudeau government. It will be very difficult for the Prime Minister to put the pieces back together.
Another minister partes ways due to disagreements.
Mr. Freeland’s resignation from the Cabinet at any time and for any reason would have been a grave loss. But her surprise departure came just hours before she was due to publish her Autumn Economic Statement – the second most important day of the year for finance ministers.
This was communicated through a scathing open letter to the Prime Minister. And it lands just a month before President-elect Trump’s term begins, an administration that is already threatening to be even more difficult than his first.
All of this taken together suggests that the Prime Minister has made a catastrophic mishandling of a minister who once thanked his lucky stars.
Particularly disappointing for Trudeau is that Freeland is not the first cabinet minister from a breakaway party. Dating back to Jody Wilson-Raybould’s disastrous departure in 2019, multiple ministers have resigned from the cabinet, including Freeland’s immediate predecessor as finance minister, and subsequently voiced their dissatisfaction with his management. It has been stated.
Part of that may be down to the culture of the Liberal Party or the talented people Trudeau has hired and appointed. They are not lifelong partisans or ideologues, nor are they the kind of politicians who tend to swallow their grievances for the sake of party or cause.
However, over the past nine years, ministerial resignations have been a clear trend in this government. And this breakdown in relationships suggests a strange dichotomy with a prime minister who is otherwise capable and willing to deal with the public.
Whatever Freeland’s shortcomings as a political communicator, she came into politics as a writer, even though she struggled to win rhetorical battles over economic and fiscal issues. Her talent was also reflected in her farewell letter.
Like a political journalist recounting the latest intrigue, she elegantly recounted her meeting with the prime minister and the reasons for her resignation. She viewed this moment in terms of the “significant challenges” facing the country. She called on the government to “keep the public finances in check” and avoid “expensive political gimmicks,” an apparent echo of the government’s decision to send $250 checks to 18 million people next spring. This seems to be a reference to the pledge.
Most of all, she suggested that the government will have to make choices about how it responds to President Trump and, perhaps, the final months of his administration.
“Inevitably, our time in power will come to an end,” she wrote. “But how we respond to the threats our country faces now will be felt for a generation, and perhaps even longer. If we are strong, smart and united, Canada will prevail.”
If Freeland was interested in running for Liberal Party leader, this would be a hell of a way to start her campaign. But, of course, you cannot participate in such a leadership competition. Not yet.
Things are only getting worse for Prime Minister Trudeau.
It was easy to believe that Prime Minister Trudeau’s time as leader of the Liberal Party was coming to an end. He lost his previously safe seat in June’s Toronto by-election.. But Prime Minister Trudeau persisted. He persisted after the Liberal Party He lost his previously safe seat in September’s Montreal by-election.. and he continued after a while Dozens of Liberal MPs called for his resignation in October.
There’s something to be said about persistence. But things are only getting worse for Trudeau.
This is not the first time that the finance minister and the prime minister have fallen out. A week ago, Conservative MP Michael Chong said: tease Freeland’s name is John Turner, who resigned from Pierre Trudeau’s cabinet in 1975. But in form, substance and timing, Mr. Freeland’s high-profile resignation on Monday may not have precedent or precedent that bodes well for Mr. Trudeau.
The unpopular prime minister, already facing an uphill battle for re-election, has been abandoned by his most important cabinet members—and an extraordinarily destructive U.S. president is about to make a major fiscal policy statement. is currently under pressure.
Mr. Freeland is certainly right that Canada should aim to be stronger, smarter, and more united now. It’s not clear whether these adjectives describe the Trudeau government.