TORONTO (Reuters) – Canada’s Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland resigned on Monday after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau asked her to take a lesser cabinet position, bringing more uncertainty to an already unpopular government.
Freeland said she and Trudeau had clashed on issues including spending and how to handle possible U.S. tariffs. She posted a stinging letter on X saying Trudeau told her on Friday he no longer wanted her to be finance minister.
Freeland, 56, has been a prominent figure in Trudeau’s Liberal government since he took office in 2015, and led the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement during the Donald Trump’s first presidency. Trump has threatened to impose 25% tariffs on all Canadian exports in his second term, which starts next month.
Freeland was Canada’s first female finance minister and had once been seen as a likely successor to lead the Liberal party. Canada must hold an election before late October, and polls show the Liberals are likely to lose to the opposition Conservatives led by Pierre Poilievre.
Before entering politics in 2013, Freeland worked as a journalist including at Reuters News from 2010 to 2013.
Below are the various roles Freeland held in Trudeau’s government.
2015 – 2017: Freeland served as Canada’s minister of international trade in Trudeau’s first cabinet, negotiating a trade agreement with the European Union.
2017 – 2019: Freeland served as Canada’s minister of foreign affairs. She renegotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement, now known as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).
2019: Trudeau appointed Freeland deputy prime minister. She led Canada’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
2020-December 2024: Freeland took on the role of finance minister after the abrupt resignation of her predecessor.
Freeland proposed new fiscal goals in November last year after economists criticized her for faltering on the fiscal guardrail of maintaining a declining debt-to-GDP ratio twice. She had been due to present a fiscal update to Parliament on Monday that was expected to show the government had missed its deficit target for last year.
(Reporting by Caroline Stauffer and Ismail Shakil, editing by Deepa Babington)
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