Canada Finance Minister Freeland Quits Amid Rift Over Trump
(Bloomberg) — Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland resigned from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet because of differences over how to prepare for the Trump administration, a stunning move that shakes the government.
Freeland has been the most powerful person in Trudeau’s cabinet for years — she was also deputy prime minister. She was the point person in developing a strategy on how to counter US President-elect Donald Trump’s threat to impose 25% tariffs.
She announced her resignation in a post to X on Monday morning, just hours before she was due to deliver a fiscal and economic update in parliament. It’s not yet clear whether that document will still be released. The Canadian dollar fell and bond yields jumped. The loonie fell as low as C$1.4271 per US dollar, its lowest intraday level since April 2020.
“On Friday, you told me you no longer want me to serve as your Finance Minister and offered me another position in the Cabinet,” Freeland said in her resignation letter to Trudeau. “Upon reflection, I have concluded that the only honest and viable path is for me to resign from the Cabinet.”
“Our country today faces a grave challenge,” Freeland wrote. “We need to take that threat extremely seriously. That means keeping our fiscal powder dry today, so we have the reserves we may need for a coming tariff war. That means eschewing costly political gimmicks, which we can ill afford and which make Canadians doubt that we recognize the gravity of the moment.”
The “political gimmicks” comment is likely a reference to the government’s announcement last month that it plans to implement a two-month sales-tax holiday on certain items, such as toys and Christmas trees, and send C$250 checks to millions of Canadians.
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