Abstract
In this second edition of IJ's new Field Report feature, Leah Sarson and Catherine Tsalikis discuss Tsalikis’ 2025 biography of Chrystia Freeland, Chrystia: From Peace River to Parliament Hill, a thorough account of an innovative, tenacious, principled fountainhead. Recorded in February 2025 after Freeland's surprise resignation from Justin Trudeau's cabinet but before her arrant loss in the Liberal Party of Canada's March 2025 leadership contest to now-Prime Minister Mark Carney, the conversation explores Freeland's staunch liberal commitments to individual rights, electoral democracy, open economies, and international diplomacy. Dissecting Tsalikis's favourable portrait of Freeland, Sarson and Tsalikis also discuss Freeland's support for feminist policies during her time in government, the gendered dynamics that have structured her career, and her idealism.
In December 2024, House of Anansi Press expedited the release of a new biography of Chrystia Freeland by two months following Freeland's surprise resignation as finance minister and deputy prime minister under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. In Chrystia: From Peace River to Parliament Hill, Toronto-based writer and journalist Catherine Tsalikis chronicles Freeland's life and career, presenting a favourable portrait of a stalwart liberal committed to individual rights, electoral democracy, open economies, and international institutions – a true liberal in the sense of an internationalist who rejects the thesis that politics is a zero-sum game.
Freeland's resignation from Trudeau's cabinet marked the end of a collegiality framed by the professional loyalty for which Freeland is known. After refuting calls for his own resignation during months of dismal polling numbers for his Liberal Party of Canada as well as the loss of a longtime Liberal-held riding in a by-election, Freeland's departure prompted Trudeau's abdication as prime minister and party leader – a feat that other well-placed insiders could not manage. In perhaps a cruel irony, Freeland is alleged to have resigned after the prime minister informed her that she was to be replaced as finance minister by Mark Carney. Although Carney did not take the position, he was, of course, the man who trounced Freeland in the March 2025 Liberal leadership contest to become prime minister. In the year that followed, Freeland first left her postitions in the transportation and internal trade portfolios of Mark Carney′s cabinet and, in January 2026, left Canadian electoral politics all together when she vacated her parlimentary seat and accepted a position as an advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Freeland, who also held ministerial positions in intergovernmental affairs, foreign affairs, and international trade in Justin Trudeau's cabinet, actively applied gender equality discourse during her time in government. Per Tsalikis, Freeland was the necessary actor to advance Canada's feminist foreign policy, Feminist International Assistance Policy (FIAP), 1 and other feminist initiatives such as a national childcare program. From Freeland's policy priorities to her family life, including her mother's incorporation of feminist values and mores into Freeland's childhood and her own struggles to balance career and family, Tsalikis's thorough research reveals an innovative, tenacious, principled fountainhead who, for all her success, has “never been the leader, without a man to answer to.” 2 Indeed, Freeland managed to force Prime Minister Trudeau out when dozens of others could not but still, her colleagues and fellow party members rejected her leadership in favour of a man.
Leah Sarson, in her role as Director of Dalhousie University's Centre for the Study of Security and Development, hosted Tsalikis on a snowy Halifax evening in February 2025 to discuss her new book and the woman at its centre. The following is their abridged conversation, which has been edited for clarity and concision.
You write of Freeland's core beliefs that one person can drive change, that economic liberalism can work for everyone, in the power of social mobility, and in the dangers inherent to the disparities wrought by globalization. The overall impression of Freeland is that of an idealist, clearly committed to her cause. Do you consider this to be a sympathetic or even affectionate portrait?
In an early review of the book, John Ibbitson said it was a flattering portrait of a politician. 3 While I think that is fair, I didn't set out with any sort of agenda or to portray her in any specific way. I spoke with around 130 people – friends, family, colleagues – from everyone from her grade two teacher in Peace River [Alberta] to the current prime minister of Ukraine, and everything in there is attributed to someone. If the book comes off as flattering, I think it is because she is impressive. She has done a lot. That is what drew me to her. She had this remarkable rise in the Trudeau government. Her star kept rising and rising as so many of her cabinet colleagues fell by the wayside, resigned, or were otherwise seen as expendable by Trudeau. I wanted to know how she did it. Since Freeland's office did not grant permission to speak with her, I reached out to people in her circle to craft an objective portrait with a bit of arm's length distance. And the proof is in the pudding. She's done a lot. She's a doer.
Were you able to answer your initial question to figure out how she does it – some sort of formula for the path Freeland took?
It is a combination of things, and I don't know that it could be replicated. From a young age, she always wanted to be in the room where things happen. That is why she wanted to go to Harvard; she saw it as the institution most likely to get her to the centre. Not for the sake of power, but because that is where you can make change, make a difference. She has a lot of drive and work ethic. Afterall, she was a raised on a farm in Peace River.
I do not think it would be possible without the family that she had. Freeland's mother was a pretty incredible woman in her own right as a trailblazing feminist lawyer. When she retired in the late 1990s to assist Freeland with childcare, she was helping to draft Ukraine's constitution and legal systems. She also chose a partner (journalist Graham Bowley) who lets her shine and her two aunts helped look after their three children. Her home base in Toronto also allowed her to do her job in a different way. World leaders, public intellectuals, foreign ministers come to her home, eat her cooking, interact with her children. Freeland draws people in, and they find it charming. She was unapologetic about making that part of her life important and always said that Justin Trudeau was supportive of that choice.
An overarching impression of Freeland that I received from the book is her commitment to liberalism, demonstrated by her long campaign against Russian irredentism and autocracy, her zeal to renegotiate NAFTA, her mobilization of Canadian support for sexual minorities in Chechnya or the White Helmets in Syria, among other initiatives, and her most well-known speeches, like the 2017 House of Commons address or 2022 Brookings Institution speech. The book affirms Freeland's dedication to individual rights, electoral democracy, open markets, and diplomacy, but in some ways, her approach can feel passé or even anachronistic, harkening to the end of the Cold War and beginning of the 21st century. As we contend with instability and changes in the global order and a rejection by many of the justice-driven agenda, as well as her limited support in the Liberal leadership contest, I wonder if Freeland's principles are no longer in vogue.
That's a hard one to answer. She seemed so much like a politician for our times just a few years ago. She has a history over her career of taking on powerful men, besting them. She secured a good deal in the NAFTA negotiations. As a young journalist in the Soviet Union, she was pestered by KGB agents. 4 She's used to this. If someone so committed to the liberal international order isn’t a politician for our times, then who is? Furthermore, people are losing faith in their representatives and political systems, but Freeland is a politician who can point to the concrete things she has achieved to show what it is that political leaders can do for the public.
Towards the end of the book, you use the word “Manichean” to describe some of Freeland's foreign policy positions, a word that I more readily associate with Stephen Harper's international politics. You write that for Freeland, doing the right thing supersedes diplomatic niceties, particularly compared to the more subtle approaches of her predecessor [as foreign minister], Stéphane Dion, or her successor, Mélanie Joly. Do you think her positions are that black and white when it comes to the complexities of global politics?
I think she is closer to Harper in that sense. I think they would agree that we should not be catering to these regimes that we know do not have Canada's best interests at heart. Unlike Harper, she believes in multilateral engagement. She almost reminds me of Tony Blair's persona as a conviction politician. But she has seen the impotence of diplomatic niceties when combatting autocracy and authoritarianism and, as she said in her Brookings Institution speech, “some actions are truly unacceptable and require an unequivocal response.” 5 I think she is both pragmatic and will do what she believes necessary to deal with threats to the world order, even if it means not going to traditional sources for expertise but rather to whomever she thinks is the best person to get things done. [Canadian politician and diplomat] Bob Rae told me that Freeland does not believe in sugarcoating things, in saying one thing and meaning the other. In 2014, when Harper told Vladimir Putin that he would shake his hand but that he had to get out of Ukraine, 6 I think Freeland was probably cheering that from afar.
While reading the book, I found myself losing sight of whether I was taking notes in preparation for our conversation or for myself as a professional woman with a young family. You write of Freeland's vocational dedication, decisive decision-making, setting and sticking to priorities, letting go of a need to be liked – all of which may resonate with professional women attempting to balance their personal and professional obligations while contending with sexism and other gendered power dynamics. Part of Freeland's liberalism is her approach to feminism and gender rights. The book recounts her shepherding Canada's national childcare program and Canada's feminist foreign policy, but also emphasizes that she expressed her convictions throughout her education and journalism career as well as her mother's influence on her feminism. That said, Freeland's feminism and her feminist foreign policy have been subject to much scholarly critique. 7 Do you have a sense of how progressive Freeland actually is?
Freeland has these strong core values, but she is also pragmatic. I think that the childcare policy was, to her, an example of both good social and economic policy. And it took a female finance minister to put it in place. The Liberals had been promising a childcare deal since the 1990s, but she was the one to get it through. Not the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) nor the Prime Minister. The PMO thought that it was not going to attract voters, but Freeland found an opportunity to push the policy through when the Covid-19 pandemic forced so many women out of the workforce. Her feminist bona fides are there, but the extent of her progressiveness depends on your definition of progressive.
One of the themes of the book is Freeland's loyalty to her bosses, all of whom have been men. Throughout both her journalist and political careers, including through several doses of national opprobrium for errors such as the SNC-Lavalin affair or the treatment of her cabinet colleagues, ministers Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott, Freeland stood by Justin Trudeau. In a The Toronto Star piece published days after Freeland's resignation, you comment that during the autumn of 2024 Trudeau did not extend the same support to Freeland as she always had for him. How do you understand Freeland's break with Trudeau and departure from cabinet as someone who has become particularly conversant with her ambitions and career trajectory?
I have no problem admitting Freeland's resignation was just as flabbergasting to me as it was to everybody else. But after I had a few days to reflect, it made sense. It wasn’t lost on her that Trudeau did not offer her strong support when rumours started circulating this fall [2024] that the PMO was unhappy with Freeland's performance and inability to sell the government's economic message following the by-election loss of her former chief of staff, Leslie Church, in what had been a safe Liberal riding. 8 Moreover, Freeland was also concerned that Trudeau was minimizing the extent of the threat posed by Donald Trump's re-election.
Despite this tension, she did not resign in October or November [2024], but only when Trudeau informed her that she would be demoted from the finance portfolio, replaced by Mark Carney, godfather to her youngest child, and given a position with no resources, money, or department attached to it dealing with Canada-US relations. She was in an untenable position whereby the man for whom she had delivered for so long no longer had confidence in her. What else was she to do? Freeland is very strategic and would have designed her exit to cause maximum effect. Moreover, she likely no longer cared if her decision would lead to Trudeau's eventual resignation. She is loyal, but she is also principled.
As far as what would happen next, I do not think she knew. As far as running for the leadership of the Liberal Party, it seems like it would be the next logical step for her – which it turned out to be. That said, Bob Rae told me that Freeland did not thrive as an opposition member of government and the Liberal Party's prospects at the end of December [2024] were dim. My best guess is that she decided to run because she really feels a sense of duty towards Canada, which is why she got into politics in the first place. Moreover, it would be a chance to be prime minister, even if only during an interregnum, and provide the opportunity to guide the party's rebuilding.
I am surprised, however, how smooth Carney's path has been so far. I did not expect so many of Freeland's cabinet colleagues to endorse Carney over Freeland, particularly because he has not spent any time in government and is politically untested. Liberals see him as the best leader for the next general election and certainly the most representative of change; Freeland is inextricably linked to the Trudeau brand. Even as she may have ruffled feathers along the way, my best guess is that it is not personal. Afterall, many of her colleagues noted to me that there are few doubts that she could do the job since she has been doing it for all intents and purposes. I think that the Liberals are looking for their best chance; perhaps in this case, it is Mark Carney. 9
If she does not win, I think she will either stay in Canada or work on something related to Ukraine – she has been the Western politician leading point on the international efforts to counter Putin. 10 Regardless of what happens, I ended the book with a quote from Brian Mulroney, who said of Freeland, “We’re dealing with a woman of substance here…she's going to be a big player, no matter what.” 11
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Catherine Tsalikis for graciously agreeing to travel to Halifax to participate in our conversation, as well as my colleagues at the Centre for the Study of Security and Development, Dr. Leigh Spanner and others at Saint Mary's University, Paul Bennett and Max Shvedov at the Halifax branch of the Canadian International Council, and my colleagues Drs. Maya Eichler and Heather A. Smith.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The 10 February 2025 conversation between Leah Sarson and Catherine Tsalikis was sponsored by the Halifax branch of the Canadian International Council, the Centre for the Study of Security and Development at Dalhousie University, and the Department of Political Science at Saint Mary's University. We thank you for your generous contributions that made this event possible.
