Canada has named a prominent critic of Russia who was banned by Moscow in 2014 as its new minister of foreign affairs, as the Canadian government prepares for what could be a radical recast of its relationship with the United States under the incoming Trump administration.
Chrystia Freeland was sworn in as Canada’s top diplomat on Tuesday, as part of a wide-ranging cabinet shuffle that also saw Ahmed Hussen, a Somali-Canadian who arrived in Canada as a 16-year-old refugee, appointed as Canada’s immigration minister.
Freeland, whose tenure as trade minister was marked by her efforts to push forward the trade agreement between Canada and the European Union, will also continue to be responsible for Canada-US trade.
The shakeup to cabinet comes less than two weeks before Donald Trump’s inauguration. Senior Canadian officials have met several times with Trump’s advisers in an effort to build bridges with the incoming administration, Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister, told reporters on Tuesday. “Obviously, the new administration to the south will present … both opportunities and challenges, as well as a shifting global context,” he said.
About three-quarters of Canada’s exports headed to the US last year. Much of this trade flowed through Nafta, the trade agreement routinely disparaged by Trump as the “worst deal in history”. Trump has vowed to renegotiate the pact and raised the spectre of withdrawal if the US fails to secure a better deal for its workers. In the days following Trump’s election, the Canadian government said it would be open to revisiting the decades-old trade pact.
Freeland will now oversee this file, drawing on her extensive network of contacts in the United States and her background as a former economic journalist. But her strong views on Russia risk driving a wedge between Canada and Trump, who has repeatedly praised Putin.
In 2014, Freeland, who lived in Moscow in the mid-1990s as bureau chief for the Financial Times and interviewed Vladimir Putin in 2000, was added to the Kremlin’s list of westerners banned from Russia as part of a series of retaliatory sanctions against Canada.
In a 2015 article titled “My Ukraine, and Putin’s big lie,” Freeland detailed her thoughts on why she had been included on the list; pointing to the fact that she was an activist of Ukrainian descent, a Canadian politician and a former journalist who in recent years had argued that Russia under Putin was careening towards a full-fledged dictatorship.
On Tuesday, Trudeau brushed aside concerns over Freeland’s icy relationship with Russia. “As to how she gets along with Russia, well, she speaks fluent Russian,” he said. “We continue to stand strongly with Ukraine and … continue to condemn in no uncertain terms the illegitimate and illegal actions of the Russians in Ukraine, in the Donbass and Crimea.”
When asked on Tuesday if she would be able to travel to Russia as foreign minister, Freeland, who has described her position on the sanctions list as an honour, said it was up to the Kremlin. “That’s a question for Moscow.”
Where Freeland may find alignment with the incoming US administration, however, could be in her views on globalisation. In 2012, Freeland published the book Plutocrats, which explored how globalisation and new technology are fuelling a growing gap between the super rich and everyone else.
Her views seemingly echo the critique of globalisation offered by Trudeau and his assertion that his government is offering a different means of tackling the issues behind the election of Donald Trump, the Brexit vote and the rise of anti-establishment, nation-first parties around the world.
Trudeau’s cabinet shakeup was the first substantial change made to a government team that was the first in Canada to be gender balanced. With the overhaul, Trudeau has again made history – women now slightly outnumber men in his cabinet, with 15 female ministers to 14 men, while Hussen ranks as the country’s first minister of Somali descent.
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