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19-12-2024
OTTAWA: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has been thrown into fresh disarray with the abrupt departure of his finance minister, Chrystia Freeland.
By the end of a frenetic Monday, a new finance minister was in place, but Trudeau was facing calls from members of his own Liberal Party to quit.
Without directly referring to the news, the prime minister told party donors at an event in Ottawa; “it’s obviously been an eventful day. It has not been an easy day.”
In her scathing resignation letter published on the day she was due to deliver an economic statement Freeland cited disagreements with her long-time ally on how to respond to the threat of tariffs from Donald Trump.
The US president-elect, who will return to the White House in January, has vowed to impose a levy of 25% on imported Canadian goods unless the shared border is made more secure.
Economists say the tariffs could have a devastating effect on Canada’s economy.
In her letter, Freeland accused Trudeau of choosing “costly political gimmicks” over addressing the threat posed by Trump’s “aggressive economic nationalism”.
Trump himself later responded to Freeland, posting that her “behavior was totally toxic, and not at all conducive to making deals which are good for the very unhappy citizens of Canada”.
Freeland said her decision came after Trudeau told her last week that he no longer wanted her to be the government’s top economic adviser.
Her departure blindsided the government, leaving the fate of the scheduled economic update in the air for hours and bringing Trudeau and his shaky minority Liberals to the brink.
In a further blow, the Liberals lost control of the Cloverdale-Langley City seat in British Columbia, after a by-election win for rival Conservatives. It was the Liberals’ third by-election defeat of the year.
Freeland’s sudden exit as finance minister earlier in the day “just makes Canada look quite confused and uncertain”, Chris Sands, director of the Wilson Center’s Canada Institute, told media.
“Trudeau finds himself a little bit alone, not super close to any of his ministers, with the big, talented ones mostly now having left,” he added.
Sands said Trump’s win in November’s US presidential election has caused a split among US allies, including Canada.
“Do you respond to Trump by pushing back and standing firm, or do you respond by trying to find a way to avoid conflict?” he said.
Trudeau has made overtures to Trump, including flying to Mar-a-Lago, the president-elect’s Florida estate, last month to dine with the president-elect but Freeland’s perspective, said Sands, was closer to that of Mexico also facing a tariff threat and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.
Mexico has positioned itself under the idea that “now is the time to say no, to push back to take a fighting stance”, he said. Many politicians remember the challenges they faced during Trump’s first term in office, he added.
“He hasn’t been inaugurated yet, but people are already reacting as though he was the president and taking serious measures.”
Freeland, who also served as deputy prime minister, had been Ottawa’s lead during the first Trump administration in the successful re-negotiation of the US-Canada-Mexico free trade pact.
It was “a really stressful and overwhelming process for Canada”, Sands said. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
