Quick Sketch: Meet Liberal leadership candidate Chrystia Freeland

OTTAWA — Chrystia Freeland is touting her experience in government as evidence she can rebuild the Liberal party and steer the country through a perilous time.

The former journalist built her career in Soviet Union, and worked personal connections to navigate the Donald Trump’s first presidency — to the point of annoying him.

It was Freeland’s decision to leave her cabinet post as finance minister, the day she was set to present a major fiscal update, that triggered Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s eventual resignation.

Here’s a quick look at her background.

Born: Aug. 2, 1968 in Peace River, Alta.

Early years: Freeland was raised by a father who was a lawyer and farmer, and a Ukrainian mother who was born in a refugee camp and ran for the NDP in 1988.

She studied Russian history at Harvard University, and Slavonic Studies at the University of Oxford. During her time as an exchange student in Kyiv, she was active in Ukrainian independence movements, leading the Soviet press to denounce her by name. She speaks Ukrainian and Russian with ease.

Career history: Freeland worked as a journalist based in Kyiv and then Moscow for the Financial Times, the Economist and the Washington Post.

She returned to Canada and worked as an editor for The Globe and Mail in the late 1990s, and eventually Reuters. She authored books about the rise of oligarchs in post-Soviet countries and income disparity caused by super-rich plutocrats.

Freeland was elected to the House of Commons in 2013, two years before Trudeau took office with a majority in 2015. During that election, she drummed up media attention by attempting to enter the men-only Cambridge Club where a Conservative cabinet minister was set to speak.

She was a cabinet minister up until her resignation last month, starting in trade and finance where she helped save an endangered trade deal with the European Union and steered Canada through the renegotiation of NAFTA.

In 2018, Saudi Arabia expelled Canada’s ambassador after Freeland and her department tweeted that the country must release arrested women’s rights activists.

She became Trudeau’s right-hand woman in late 2019 when he named her deputy prime minister. She was the first women to serve as federal finance minister in 2020, overseeing historic spending in the COVID-19 pandemic.

Her term as minister of intergovernmental affairs involved federal responses to the rise of Alberta separatism, and she manages to form friendships across party lines, particularly with Ontario Premier Doug Ford.

Family: She is married to New York Times journalist Graham Bowley. They have two daughters, Natalka and Halyna, and one son, Ivan.

Quote: “Democracy means when people tell you something, you have to listen. And I will say our party hasn’t been good enough at that.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 19, 2025.

Dylan Robertson, The Canadian Press