Chrystia Freeland: Trudeau's first star candidate becomes his brand ambassador
New foreign affairs minister known for extensive international connections
Chrystia Freeland, the new foreign affairs minister, wasn't quite the first Justin Trudeau Liberal — Yvonne Jones was elected in a byelection a month after he became party leader — but she was his first star candidate, wooed by Trudeau and his advisers to hold the Liberal bastion of Toronto-Centre.
Her turn to politics in 2013 came on the heels of her acclaimed book, Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else, and her reporting on economic inequality converged with Trudeau's increasing focus on the middle class.
Her curriculum vitae reads like the model of a certain Liberal ideal: a worldly, Harvard-educated journalist who has worked in Moscow and New York, writing and talking about international politics and global finance while in the employ of some of the most revered companies in international media. (Her familial roots in Peace River, Alta., help to take some of the edge off her cosmopolitan bona fides.)
Before she was even elected, she was made a co-chair of the economic advisory council of MPs and wonks that would inform the Liberal platform. Immediately upon arriving in Ottawa, she became a prominent voice on Russian interference in Ukraine, her ancestral homeland.
During 14 months as the minister of international trade, she completed a deal with the European Union — famously emoting in public at one point during negotiations and later hugging her Conservative predecessor in the Commons — and apparently worked to improve her French.
With all of that in mind, it perhaps makes sense that Trudeau has made Freeland his envoy to the world.
At a moment of remarkable global uncertainty and with remarkable attention on Canada's example amid the tumult, Freeland has been put front and centre.
Freeland vs. Trump and Putin
A senior government source calls her the right person for what is now a very difficult job. The world is certainly having a bit of a moment, dizzied by the developments of Donald Trump and Brexit. The liberal order is beset by the forces of populism, protectionism and nationalism.
The U.S. is particularly pivotal for the Canadian economy and it's certainly easier to imagine Freeland dealing with senior members of the Trump administration than, say, Stéphane Dion, the fastidious professor whom Freeland replaces.
Freeland might have ended up foreign minister regardless of who was president.
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She is said to be highly trusted by the prime minister and his advisers and is hailed for her work ethic, her diplomacy and her connections.
"She probably walks into that job with a broader and deeper network of alliances than anyone since [Lester B.] Pearson," a government source told CBC news.
(Mitchell Sharp might have tried to make a case for himself here.)
For whatever it's worth, she can also boast of having interviewed Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2000, when she was an editor at the Globe and Mail. And she speaks Russian.
But Freeland, a frequent critic of the Putin regime as a journalist, has been banned from setting foot in Russia since 2014.
The degree to which that will matter in any practical sense remains to be seen. But it's at least a potentially interesting twist, seized on by The Guardian, in light of Trump's praise for the Russian leader.
A voice for the Trudeau brand
In what might have been her last speech as trade minister, Freeland enthused about the "open society" and made what has become the Trudeau government's central argument: that immigration, diversity and trade are valuable ideas, but that in the absence of widespread economic security those ideas will come under attack.
Freeland seems steeped in the essential stuff of the global moment. She's thought about the need for a new model of progressive government. To that she's added the real experience of negotiating a trade deal. And now she can try navigating the United Nations as Canada pursues a seat on the Security Council and prepares to embark on peacekeeping efforts.
In the acknowledgements at the end of Plutocrats — the list of friends, colleagues, advisers and acquaintances reads like a potential speakers list for the next World Economic Forum summit in Davos — Freeland writes, "I sometimes describe my own political philosophy as being simply 'Canadian.'"
At the time that might've just meant an enthusiasm for bank regulation.
But, over the past year, "Canadian" has become a trendy adjective associated with pluralism, pandas and other retweetable notions. And now Freeland, an early adherent to Trudeau's cause, gets to represent, protect and build that brand abroad.
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