Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland resigns from cabinet
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland announced Monday that she is resigning from cabinet, hours before she was scheduled to table the Trudeau government’s Fall Economic Statement.
“On Friday, you told me you no longer want me to serve as your Finance Minister and offered me another position in cabinet,” Freeland wrote in a letter addressed to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, which she shared on social media site X. “Upon reflection, I have concluded that the only honest and viable path is for me to resign from cabinet.”
See my letter to the Prime Minister below // Veuillez trouver ma lettre au Premier ministre ci-dessous pic.twitter.com/NMMMcXUh7A
Freeland added that she and the Prime Minister have, over recent weeks, “been at odds about the best path forward for Canada.”
Her resignation came following reports by the Globe and Mail that the Prime Minister has been courting former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney to replace her as finance minister.
Monday’s fall statement is widely expected to show the government has failed to adhere to one of the fiscal guardrails Freeland had previously set: keeping the deficit under $40.1 billion for the 2023-2024 fiscal year.
In her letter, Freeland highlighted the threat posed by a potential 25-per-cent tariff from the incoming Trump administration in January.
“We need to take that threat extremely seriously,” she wrote. “That means keeping our fiscal powder dry today, so we have the reserves we may need for a coming tariff war.”
The fall economic statement is set to be tabled in the House of Commons at 4 p.m. on Monday.
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