Prime Minister Justin Trudeau congratulates Chrystia Freeland after she was sworn in as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs during a ceremony at Rideau Hall on November 20, 2019 in Ottawa.CHRIS WATTIE/AFP/Getty Images
Shortly after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau named Chrystia Freeland as his deputy PM in 2019, they began having weekly meetings. At first, things did not go well.
The introverted Mr. Trudeau was visibly uncomfortable, which left Ms. Freeland feeling awkward.
“Conversation could be stilted, with neither quite sure where to start,” Catherine Tsalikis wrote in her coming biography of the former finance minister. Staff “felt almost as if they were parents bringing two teenagers on a date, prompting them to ask each other about their weekends to get the discussion going.”
Things eventually loosened up, but those meetings reveal the great difficulty that Mr. Trudeau has in dealing with other people – even his most trusting and devoted cabinet minister.
Which makes Ms. Freeland’s political estrangement from Mr. Trudeau upon resigning from cabinet on Monday both shocking and understandable.
In Chrystia: From Peace River to Parliament Hill, Ms. Tsalikis described her subject as brilliant, energetic – frenetic, even – and deeply loyal. And the laudatory portrait reveals the future that the author anticipates for her subject.
Ms. Freeland “has accomplished so much and is, by all indications, not ready to stop,” Ms. Tsalikis wrote, which is why “few would be surprised if she were to become the next leader of the Liberal Party – or a prime minister of Canada.”
Even before Monday, the odds and the polls were stacked against there being a Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland any time soon. It’s debatable whether her decision to quit cabinet and to criticize Mr. Trudeau’s fiscal priorities as she was leaving shortens or lengthens those odds.
(The publisher, House of Anansi, sent me a proof of the book several weeks ago. On Monday, they gave me permission to quote from the book in advance of publication. Anansi has advanced the publication date from Feb. 4 to this Friday.)
To understand how far Ms. Freeland must have been pushed to lash out as she did Monday – torpedoing the very fall economic statement she was supposed to have delivered – it helps to look at events in London two decades ago.
Up until then, her rise had been meteoric: from a Prairie small town to Harvard University; to reporting on Eastern Europe for the Financial Times and becoming its Moscow bureau chief; to serving as deputy editor of The Globe and Mail before heading back to FT in 2001, where she rose to the rank of deputy editor and presumed heir-apparent to editor Andrew Gowers.
But Mr. Gowers became embroiled in a newsroom power struggle that he was destined to lose. Ms. Freeland could have played newsroom politics. Instead, Ms. Tsalikis wrote, she stayed loyal, which so damaged her career that, when Mr. Trudeau appealed to her in 2013 to return to Canada and run in a Toronto by-election as the Liberal candidate, she agreed.
After the Liberals won power in 2015, Ms. Freeland revealed herself to be one of the government’s most valuable assets. She rescued a trade agreement with the European Union and helped rescue one with the United States. She improved fractured relations with premiers – some of them, at least – and played a key role in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, before stepping in as finance minister when a disgruntled Bill Morneau called it quits.
Ms. Freeland was as loyal to Mr. Trudeau as she was to Mr. Gowers. But loyalty to this Prime Minister appears to be a one-way street. As the government sank in the polls, stories appeared in The Globe about growing frustration within the Prime Minister’s Office over Ms. Freeland’s performance. Mr. Trudeau openly sought Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of Canada, to join the government.
On Friday, according to Ms. Freeland’s letter of resignation, Mr Trudeau told her he wanted her out of the finance portfolio, offering a more junior position. Instead, Ms. Freeland hit back. As a former journalist, she knew exactly how to maximize the damage: resign early in the day on the day of the fall economic statement, and watch the government writhe.
Ms Freeland announced in her letter that she will remain in Parliament and seek re-election in her Toronto riding of University-Rosedale.
Does she still hope to make Ms. Tsalikis’s prediction come true? We’ll see.