Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland on Monday quit in a surprise move after disagreeing with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over US president-elect Donald Trump’s tariff threats.
The resignation of Freeland, 56, who also stepped down as finance minister, marked the first open dissent against Trudeau from within his Cabinet, and could threaten his hold on power.
Liberal leader Trudeau lags 20 points in polls behind his main rival, Conservative Pierre Poilievre, who has tried three times since September to topple the government and force a snap election.
Photo: Reuters
“It’s not been an easy day,” Trudeau said at a fundraiser Monday evening, but in difficult times, he added, “we must all pull together.”
Freeland’s departure came just hours before she was scheduled to provide an update on the nation’s finances.
She said in her resignation letter to Trudeau that the nation “faces a grave challenge,” pointing to Trump’s planned 25 percent tariffs on imports from Canada.
“For the past number of weeks, you and I have found ourselves at odds about the best path forward for Canada,” she wrote.
Trump reacted to Freeland’s surprise departure late on Monday.
“She will not be missed!!!” Her behavior was totally toxic, and not at all conducive to making deals which are very good for the unhappy citizens of Canada,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
First elected to parliament in 2013, Freeland, a former journalist, joined Trudeau’s Cabinet two years later when the Liberals swept to power, holding key posts including trade and foreign minister, and leading free-trade negotiations with the EU and the US.
Most recently, she had been tasked with helping lead Canada’s response to the incoming Trump administration. As the first woman to hold the nation’s purse strings, she had also been tipped as a possible successor to Trudeau.
By the day’s end, Canadian Minister of Public Safety, Democratic Institutions and Intergovernmental Affairs Dominic LeBlanc was sworn in as Canadian minister of finance, just as the government announced a C$62 billion (US$43.5 billion) deficit — about C$22 billion more than projected — due to “unexpected expenses.”
LeBlanc now takes the reins on negotiating with the Trump administration and has promised to be “focused on the challenges” ahead.
Canada’s main trading partner is the US, with 75 percent of its exports each year going to its southern neighbor.
Trudeau flew to Florida last month to dine with Trump at the latter’s Mar-a-Lago resort and try to head off the tariff threat, but nothing yet indicates the US president-elect is changing his position.
In her letter, Freeland said that Canada needed to take Trump’s tariffs threats “extremely seriously.”
Warning that it could lead to a “tariff war” with the US, she said Ottawa must keep its “fiscal powder dry.”
“That means eschewing costly political gimmicks, which we can ill afford,” she wrote, in an apparent rebuke of a sales tax holiday that critics said was too costly.
Dalhousie University professor Lori Turnbull called Freeland’s exit “a total disaster.”
“It really shows that there is a crisis of confidence in Trudeau and makes it much harder for Trudeau to continue as prime minister,” Turnbull said.
Until Monday, the Cabinet had rallied around the prime minister as he faced pockets of dissent from backbench lawmakers, University of Ottawa professor Genevieve Tellier said, but the Freeland quitting shows his team is not as united behind him as some thought.
One by one, ministers trickled out of a Cabinet meeting past a gauntlet of reporters shouting questions. Some shouted back that they had “confidence in the prime minister,” but most, looking solemn, said nothing.
“We simply cannot go on like this,” Poilievre said. “The government is spiraling out of control ... at the very worst time.”
In another blow to Trudeau, Canadian Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Sean Fraser also resigned on Monday. He described Freeland as “professional and supportive.”
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but