Chrystia Freeland’s Very Strange Goodbye

To say that Chrystia Freeland’s resignation on Wednesday—effective Friday, January 9—wasn’t as well timed and executed as her December 2024 departure as Justin Trudeau’s finance minister and deputy prime minister would be an understatement.

Previous to that, Freeland posted to her social media channels, this past Monday, that she had accepted a voluntary role as an economic advisor to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The position meant that she would step aside as Prime Minister Mark Carney’s special representative for the reconstruction of Ukraine. “In the coming weeks, I will also leave my seat in Parliament,” she added, referring to her position as member of Parliament for University—Rosedale.

That’s when the backlash began. Questions rose around conflicts of interest and advising a foreign government while sitting as an MP. “Foreign interference can happen even from allies,” noted international criminal justice law expert Mark Kersten. Conservative and New Democratic Party MPs alike added to the indignation, compelling Freeland to accelerate her stepping down as MP.

As Freeland’s unofficial biographer Catherine Tsalikis observed the fallout online, it occurred to her that Freeland’s awkward resignation had arrived almost exactly on the anniversary that Trudeau himself announced that he would step down as prime minister—a capitulation partially instigated by Freeland herself.

The Walrus spoke to Tsalikis about the botched resignation. Tsalikis, whose book Chrystia: From Peace River to Parliament Hill came out in 2024, believes that, as embarrassing as her exit from Canadian politics has played out over the past week, this next chapter is the most natural thing in the world for her.

As someone who has spent years researching and writing about Freeland, did you see this coming? That she would be directly appointed by President Zelenskyy as economic advisor?

I saw it coming 100 percent. For the book, I reached out to Denys Shmyhal, who was, at the time, Ukraine’s prime minister. He made time in the middle of a war to talk to me about Freeland because that’s how highly he regards her. That indicates to me how deeply respected she is in those circles. After the interview, the prime minister’s press secretary sent over photos of Zelenskyy awarding Freeland with a prestigious Ukrainian award for her contribution to the support and protection of the country.

I also spoke to Andry Shevchenko, a former Ukrainian ambassador to Canada, who told me that they consider Freeland one of theirs. He remembered her from Kyiv in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Freeland made a name for herself as a journalist reporting on Ukraine’s push for independence from the Soviet Union. The line between journalism and activism for her was fuzzy: she was active in pro-independence circles and never hesitated to smuggle contraband material in and out of the country if it would help the cause. Being detained at Moscow Airport and questioned by KGB agents was par for the course for her. It isn’t surprising that, decades later, she would choose a role in which she could use her economic and financial background to further a cause so dear to her heart.

Carney had made Freeland his special representative on the reconstruction of Ukraine. Now she’ll be Zelenskyy’s economic advisor. What’s the difference in the roles, other than the fact that one is for a foreign country?

I honestly can’t tell what the difference is. To me, it seems like she’s laying out a path for her exit from politics. It was announced last year that she’s going to be chief executive officer of the Rhodes Trust, which makes sense since she was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University. She’s also going to be teaching and writing: I’ve heard that she’s going to be based in Oxford, England.

This job is also voluntary and unpaid. It seems more in the vein of those historian-intellectual types. Ever since Russian president Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022, she has had this steadfast belief that Ukraine will win this war. It’s never been a question for her, even when so many other people in the Ukrainian community have been extremely worried about the future of the country. The fight is personal: it’s the fight of her maternal grandparents, who fled Ukraine at the beginning of World War II and never returned but always believed the country would gain its independence from the Soviet Union.

Did being the prime minister’s special representative pave the way for the economic advisory role?

I don’t think this role came about because of the previous one. The way I see it, she has been such a champion for the Ukrainian government since day one of the war. She’s done a lot of international convening, bringing counterparts together—finance ministers, central bankers—to push initiatives like the sanctioning of Russia’s central bank and the seizing of Russian assets to fund Ukraine’s war effort. She was at the forefront of spearheading Canada’s response to Putin’s war in Ukraine, even as she held various cabinet posts in the past few years. The role is something that came naturally, and it’s the logical next step for her, given her former position as finance minister of a G7 country.

• Ukraine’s War Is Producing a New Politics of Memory
• When Chrystia Freeland Ran Out of Patience
• Chrystia Freeland Wants to Fix the Twenty-First Century

Why do you think it took Freeland so long to resign more immediately? She had to have known that acting as an MP and as an advisor to Ukraine for weeks was a major conflict of interest.

I have no idea why she wouldn’t just resign before announcing the appointment. I would think she would have thought it through. She’s known for being careful in her decision making and thinking through consequences. Like when she resigned on the day of the fall economic statement and how effective that was. In my personal opinion, I don’t think this was just a messy kerfuffle. Like her resignation in 2024, it would have been a calculated one.

It’s puzzling because she has such a moral compass. Not only is doing the right thing important to her, but giving the appearance of doing the right thing is also so important to her. In her statement, she said that she consulted the ethics commissioner, so maybe it is all above board. Maybe Carney was super desperate to hang on to that seat, so she was asked to wait out of loyalty; though the prime minister, when asked about this, said that wasn’t how things went down.

Some are saying she’s abandoning her country.

That’s not for me to litigate, but understanding the trajectory of her career, this move makes sense. People can think what they want to think. She’s given ten plus years of her career to serving Canada. She tried for the top job but didn’t get it. Carney made her a part of his cabinet, which was gracious of him, given how tied she was to the toxic Trudeau brand. But after her loss in the leadership race, she gradually faded from the headlines. In recent months, it hasn’t been hard to imagine that she has had one foot out the door. It’s time for her to move on—she so very clearly thrives in the room where things happen.