“She has a history of taking on powerful men”: Chrystia Freeland’s biographer on the finance minister’s bombshell resignation

When Canadian journalist Catherine Tsalikis signed on to write a biography of Chrystia Freeland four years ago, she worried that it might be hard to keep up with the headlines. “This is politics. For all I knew, by the time the book came out, there would have been an election or she would have left the House of Commons entirely,” she says. Still, Freeland’s surprise resignation from cabinet following a proposed demotion by Trudeau was not on Tsalikis’s 2024 bingo card. News of the excommunication has turned Canada’s former finance minister into the biggest story in Canadian politics and put a rush on Tsalikis’s book, Chrystia: From Peace Valley to Parliament Hill, which hits shelves today instead of the intended pub date in February of 2025. “I guess that’s a good thing,” says Tsalikis, who is still processing the news and what it could mean for Canadian politics.

You have spent four years learning everything you possibly could about Chrystia Freeland. On a scale of “saw that coming” to “totally gobsmacked,” how surprised were you by Monday’s sudden resignation? When I first saw the news, my initial reaction is not printable—it definitely involved an expletive. I knew there had been tensions following the leaks over the past few weeks, but this was shocking. Knowing what I do about the relationship between Chrystia Freeland and Justin Trudeau, how much the PM has relied on her, it really didn’t make sense at first, but now that I’ve had a couple of days to process, it kind of does make sense.

How so? Freeland has this history of standing on principle, not being pushed around. Now it’s come out that it was Trudeau who said, You’re no longer needed in the finance department, and by the way, you’re being replaced by Mark Carney—an unelected outsider with no government experience. Knowing what I do about her principles and her self-worth, it doesn’t surprise me that she may have found the situation untenable. The other thing that really came through in many of the interviews I did is that she liked being able to deliver for the Trudeau government in such a way where she could also work toward the goals that she was passionate about: countering Putin’s incursion into Ukraine, for example, or securing free trade agreements that she believed would benefit Canada. Then she found herself in this position where she saw a serious economic threat looming with the second Trump presidency and she had lost the confidence of the prime minister.

Related: The tenacious Chrystia Freeland

Your book is unauthorized. Were you initially hoping for your subject’s participation? When Freeland became Canada’s first woman finance minister in 2020, I started to think about what a biography might look like. As a journalist, I’ve spent a lot of my career covering international affairs. You really get a sense of how few women occupy positions of power in that world, which makes the ones who do very interesting. So that’s what I was thinking when I got a text from an old boss saying, You should be working on a book about Chrystia Freeland. I did reach out to her team early on. By that time, I had read several Canadian political biographies, some where the subject participated and others where they didn’t, so I knew it could be done both ways. I think maybe it ended up being a good thing in terms of giving me some critical distance. A lot of the people I spoke with, journalists who had worked with her, said the second you speak with her, it becomes a different book.

Given the unauthorized factor, I think I was expecting more scandalous material. Did you avoid dirt on principle or did you not find any? One of her old friends from her days as a journalist in Moscow was like, “There are no skeletons—you’re not going to find them.” But I think it’s a mix. I don’t think I am temperamentally suited to be a tabloid journalist. I cover people because I believe that individuals make a difference and I want to know how they do what they do, so that was my approach. I just read a review from John Ibbitson that described the book as a “sympathetic portrait.” I’ve heard people on radio shows saying that the book was obviously ghostwritten by Freeland and financed by tax dollars. I thought, Dude, I have never even met her. I talked to 130 people who know her and have worked with her, and that’s the view that I present in the book. If it comes off that she is impressive, perhaps that’s because she is. There were a couple of colourful anecdotes from my interviews that I wasn’t able to include because they didn’t feel verifiable.

So then she really did get drunk at Harvard and hang out in the smoking section of the freshman dorms? Right. And she got up on a pool table drinking champagne. All of that came from her best friend at Harvard, so I was comfortable including it. The journalist Jan Wong probably gave the most negative portrait. Freeland was her managing editor at the Globe and Mail in the late ’90s, and she said that she was always managing up, focused on ingratiating herself with the higher-ups. But then I spoke with Cathrin Bradbury, who was also at the Globe with her and who said, “Yes, she did manage up, but that was in the interest of getting better stories, fighting for better journalism.” So any time there was a criticism, there would be a balance. Some people who worked under her as a minister talked about how she was not very accessible: rather than going through the normal channels, she had a tendency to go outside of the department. But other officials argued that that’s the way to get things done and it’s how she was able to leverage her training in journalism—you go to the source.

If not quite bombshells, are there parts of the book that will feel scandalous to Parliament Hill nerds? There are parts where I’m able to provide some behind-the-scenes detail relating to some very public moments. For example, there’s her famous walkout during the 2016 negotiations for the Canada–European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), where she halted the discussions. Freeland was in Belgium representing Canada in trade talks, and she spoke very emotionally, almost in tears, about how she was going to go home and see her kids. There was the suggestion in the Canadian media that it was all for show, but I spoke with Steve Verheul, who was her right-hand man during that time, and he explained how they reached the decision to pause the talks and that it really was a surprise to the PMO—not a stunt. There was also the tension with Bill Morneau over NAFTA negotiations, where he was more in favour of capitulation to get a quick deal whereas Freeland was more ready to wait. It got to the point where Jared Kushner wrote in his book, Breaking History, that she didn’t appear to be negotiating at all. That was a tactic.

Is there a particular anecdote that serves as a sort of origin story? The thing that made her? I think probably the 1980 trip that she made to Ukraine, going behind the Iron Curtain with her mom, aunt and sister. Freeland is known as a staunch defender of democracy and also of capitalism, not as a faultless system but as the best one we’ve got and one that needs to be defended. I think her experience on that trip, when she was only twelve years old, really solidified the belief that Canada is doing something right. She and her family would speak in Ukrainian, and people were afraid to talk to them because they thought it was a trap. That experience of being surveilled and the visceral feeling that comes with living under an oppressive regime was really formative.

I liked the story of the bunk beds at Harvard. Right. So Freeland arrived at Harvard in 1986 as a new undergrad, trucking up to her new dorm, and she was in a suite with five girls and only four rooms. Three girls had already claimed the solo rooms, and all that was left for Freeland and Alison Franklin, who would go on to be a lifelong best friend, was the one room with a bunk bed. They decided, No way, this isn’t fair. So they marched in and struck a deal where there would be a switch halfway through the semester. Franklin told me about how she was once watching the news during the CETA talks. When she saw that Freeland was at an impasse, she laughed and thought, Don’t worry—if she can negotiate with the mean girls of Harvard, she can do this. I don’t think this necessarily comes off in her public persona, which can seem aloof and condescending, but the people who know her, all they would talk about is her ability to build coalitions. Another key theme was an almost insistent frugality and lack of airs. She wears the same sneakers for every occasion, rides the TTC, cooks pot roast for foreign dignitaries and refuses to hire a house cleaner. It’s hard not to view this as strategic branding, no? I think she is a very frugal person. The thing about the sneakers is something that goes back to her Harvard days, long before she got into politics. The house—that’s something my friends and I have talked about. Like, if you were the deputy prime minister, you would hire a house cleaner. But I think maybe that is not her. Her sister Natalka told me that journalists have asked her time and time again about whether this is all a ruse. The conclusion that I have come to is that it’s just not important to her. She has more pressing things to deal with, and she’s not going to pay lip service or spend time thinking about things she doesn’t think are integral to the job that she’s doing. I don’t think she had the brain power to think, Hey, why is there paper strewn all over my dining room table? It’s the same reason she wears the same style of dress a lot of the time—leaving aside whether that’s a sexist subject to consider. I’m not sure that people wonder if Trudeau is wearing the same suit.

True, although it’s not a red suit, a colour that seems intended to be noticed. I know. Maybe she did one of those colour wheel things and that was the colour that looked best. I honestly don’t think she cares. One of her former EAs told me that he thinks she wishes she could be a brain in a jar. Appearance is a distraction.

You spent a lot of time researching the relationship between Freeland and Trudeau, which is of more interest now than ever. What did you learn there? I think if you look back to that photo of Trudeau and his new cabinet after the 2015 swearing in, Freeland is right there beside him—his right hand from day one. Peter Harder, who was on Trudeau’s transition team, told me that placement was very deliberate, meant to signal how important she was going to be, and of course that was the case. Several people I spoke with in government believe that the majority of Trudeau’s policies are actually Freeland’s policies. He really came to rely on her in times of crisis: NAFTA, Ukraine and, in 2019, when it looked like there may be a Wexit, he put her in as minister of intergovernmental affairs. Then, before she could even truly get started in that role, Bill Morneau was out, and she replaced him as minister of finance, trusted with the reopening of the Canadian economy after the pandemic. That’s when Trudeau and Freeland started meeting once a week, just the two of them, which is not something the PM had done with other ministers.

Right. But you write about how awkward those one-on-ones were at the start. The staff who accompanied them compared it to overseeing two teenagers on a first date. I was surprised by that anecdote too, and the person who told me that said it came down to their personalities. Despite being so mediagenic, Trudeau is an introvert at heart. And Freeland is generally warm and able to connect with all kinds of people, but she also has a lot of frenetic energy. I think that, in these meetings, she must have had so much on her mind. They eventually found their groove. I don’t think it was a buddy-buddy situation, but certainly he trusted and relied on her.

Is it possible he may have been jealous? Trudeau is sometimes characterized as an intellectual lightweight, and with people describing Freeland as the brains of the operation... That’s not a suggestion I came across. Do you think it’s possible that Trudeau opted to throw Freeland under the bus to save his own reputation? In the summer, Freeland’s former chief of staff, Leslie Church, lost the by-election in Toronto–St. Paul’s. That was a big blow for the party, and there started to be these leaks about how Trudeau’s chief of staff Katie Telford wasn’t happy with the job Freeland was doing selling the government’s agenda. At the time, it seemed like maybe Freeland would be the sacrificial lamb, but that was in July. So why wait until now? Maybe Trudeau thought hiring Carney would be a Hail Mary that would change his positioning in the polls. Again, the timing seems off—the caucus revolt was back in the summer. Who knows? So much about Trudeau’s communications choices in the past few months don’t make sense. I think he comes out of this looking poorer. He has basically cast aside his most loyal cabinet minister.

And a minister with a track record of successfully negotiating with Trump, though I’m wondering if Freeland’s history with Trump may have started to seem like a liability. I could understand if he didn’t think she was the best person for the best job in terms of negotiating with Trump. She played the bad-cop role, and that got them to a NAFTA that was good enough for Trudeau, but maybe this time he thought they needed a different strategy, someone without that history of confrontation, who would go along to get along. Maybe that played into it, but also, how much longer does this government have? Does Trudeau really think he’s going to be dealing with the Trump administration for more than a few months? It seems like a poor strategy to have to deal with the fallout of this bombshell resignation. And for what?

Freeland resigned just a few hours before she was supposed to deliver the fall budget update, and she posted her resignation letter on social media. Did that feel more explosive or vindictive than the woman you spent years researching?  But how else could she have done it? Was she going to present the fall budget and then resign? I think that would have been a step too far for her. She is an extremely loyal person, but also—and this is something a lot of people from back in her days as Moscow bureau chief for the Financial Times mentioned—she has a ruthless streak. I got an email recently from a friend of hers saying that this was the Freeland she knew: a woman who would take on the oligarchs, people with blood under their fingernails, and she just had no fear. This is a woman with a history of taking on powerful men.

It is possible that her resignation is also an act of political manoeuvring: jumping off a sinking ship before launching her own leadership bid? I don’t think it was intended that way, but if she does decide to run for leadership of the Liberal party someday, that’s how people will see it. All I know is that she has filed the paperwork to run in her riding in the next election, and I’m told she is committed to doing that. Anything else would be speculation.

And fodder for your follow-up? I guess we’ll see.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.