Chrystia Freeland, who was former Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau’s top ally before she helped force him out, said Tuesday she was leaving the cabinet for a role focused on Ukraine.
Freeland also ran to replace Trudeau as Liberal Party leader and prime minister, but lost decisively in a March vote to Mark Carney, before joining Carney’s cabinet.
Carney said he had asked Freeland — a fluent Ukrainian speaker — to serve in a new role, Canada’s special representative for the reconstruction of Ukraine.
Freeland said she was leaving her role as minister for transport and internal trade “with tremendous gratitude and a little sadness,” adding that she would stay on in parliament but did not plan to seek another term.
“A great strength of democracy is that no one holds political office in perpetuity,” she said in a statement.
Carney provided few details about Freeland’s Ukraine job, but said her previous roles as Canada’s minister of finance, foreign affairs and international trade made her “uniquely positioned” to support Kyiv.
While serving as Trudeau’s deputy prime minister and finance minister late last year, Freeland released a scathing resignation letter hours before she had been set to deliver a major economic speech on the government’s behalf.
She accused Trudeau of prioritizing vote-buying gimmicks like a Christmas tax holiday instead of shoring up Canada’s finances for a looming trade war with then US President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration.
Freeland’s dramatic departure was seen as a key factor in pushing Trudeau to resign after a decade in power.
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