OTTAWA – Arguably the most influential member of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Cabinet as his foreign affairs minister during his Liberal government’s first term in office, Chrystia Freeland now serves as his chief lieutenant following her November 20 appointment as Canada’s deputy prime minister – a role unlikely to dramatically shift the Ukrainian Canadian parliamentarian’s attention away from her ancestral homeland, according to the Canadian-based president of the Ukrainian World Congress (UWC).
“She understands Ukraine and Russia better than any Western politician globally, and is viewed by other foreign ministers as the key point-person on Ukraine,” said Paul Grod in an interview. “She has a deep interest in Ukraine, and has expressed to me that she will still have a role in the Canada-Ukraine relationship – but to what extent, we’ll see.”
Only the 10th deputy prime minister in Canadian history (a position created in 1977 by Mr. Trudeau’s father, then-Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau) and the only Ukrainian Canadian to hold the post, Ms. Freeland carries a largely honorary title, which unlike the vice-president’s role in the United States, does not give her the automatic right of succession to the prime minister, should he leave office by choice or circumstance. She will, however, represent the Liberal government during the question period in the House of Commons when Mr. Trudeau is absent.
But Deputy Prime Minister Freeland has another Cabinet responsibility that is far from ceremonial and which will keep her as busy as she was in the foreign-affairs portfolio.
She now also serves as the intergovernmental affairs minister entrusted with trying to find unity in a country divided along regional lines, particularly in western Canada, where the 51-year-old superstar of Prime Minister Trudeau’s Cabinet was born.
Faced with an economy badly bruised by falling oil prices, the resource-rich province of Alberta has supplanted the French-speaking province of Quebec as the Canadian cauldron steaming with the sentiment of separation from the rest of the country.
Christina (Chrystia) Alexandra Freeland was born on August 2, 1968, in the northwestern Alberta town of Peace River, the daughter of Donald Freeland, a farmer, lawyer and Liberal, and the late Halyna (Chomiak) Freeland, who was also a lawyer and who ran as a candidate in an Edmonton riding for the left-of-center New Democratic Party in the 1988 Canadian general election.
James Bezan, a farmer and fellow Ukrainian Canadian member of Parliament, who represents a Manitoba riding in the House for the Official Opposition Conservatives, considers Ms. Freeland “another prairie farm kid” like him and who has a “big task” ahead of her.
“I hope that, because she has those prairie roots, she will bring a level of understanding and respect to the concerns that are being raised by western Canadians over the policies of the Trudeau government,” particularly through legislation that would restrict the construction of pipelines and the transport of oil by tankers along the Canadian west coast, said Mr. Bezan.
“She has a lot to clean up. The confederation’s a mess because of Trudeau and she’s got to try to fix what he broke. She’s got to be the anti-Trudeau,” he added
“I know from working with her that she has the ability to reach across party lines – and being a Liberal growing up in a Tory blue prairie region like Peace River, she’s one of those rare individuals who can bridge that gap,” Mr. Bezan noted.
Chrystia Freeland’s singularity
Prime Minister Trudeau spoke to Deputy Prime Minister Freeland’s singularity when he addressed reporters following the swearing-in ceremony of his Cabinet that includes 36 ministers (besides the prime minister).
“Chrystia and I have worked very closely on some of the biggest files facing Canada… and with great success on renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the challenges of the American administration,” Mr. Trudeau said. “Our ability to work well together on these issues that quite frankly touch national unity, touch energy and environment, touch relations with all provinces and all regions of this country is going to be an extremely important thing at a time when we see some very different perspectives across the country that need to be brought together.”
“We’re going to have to engage in a strong and positive way with governments, different orders of government right across the country. And I’m very much looking forward to doing that with Chrystia by my side,” he said.
Ms. Freeland, who was unavailable for an interview with The Ukrainian Weekly, will also continue to oversee the ratification process of the revised NAFTA, and was in Washington for talks on the trilateral deal before the American Thanksgiving holiday.
Mr. Grod, past-president of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC), said he has witnessed firsthand the “very strong rapport” between the prime minister and his new deputy.
“He respects her tremendously,” commented Mr. Grod. “I’ve seen them on stage together and on panels together, which is quite unusual for the prime minister to share the podium as extensively as he does with Chrystia. That demonstrates that he is very comfortable with her, and she with him. She’s very deferential and respectful to him, but he at the same time values her competence and her expertise.”
A close friend of Ms. Freeland’s, Mr. Grod said she told him that she “wanted to stay in foreign affairs” after holding her House seat for the Toronto riding of University-Rosedale in the October 21 federal election that left the Trudeau Liberals with a minority government.
“But she was prepared to serve in whatever the most effective way that the prime minister thought, and he chose intergovernmental affairs, which makes a lot of sense based on the current situation domestically,” said Mr. Grod, who noted that he had to reassure members of the Ukrainian diaspora that Ms. Freeland’s appointment as deputy prime minister was a promotion that gave her a senior role in the Trudeau Cabinet.
“She’s been a superstar with every Ukrainian president and prime minister that she’s interacted with,” he said. “She walks on water – that’s the way she’s perceived.”
Immensely proud of her Ukrainian roots, Ms. Freeland, who speaks the language fluently and is known to regularly take her children Natalka, Halyna and Ivan to Ukrainian school in Toronto on Saturday mornings, signaled that she won’t stray far from her ethnic community less than three weeks before the shift in her Cabinet duties.
At the UCC’s triennial congress held in Ottawa in early November, where Ms. Freeland was the keynote speaker on the first day, November 1, she said the Ukrainian Canadian community covers a “regional divide in a way that is very powerful” and could serve as a unifying force in a divided country.
The connection to community has been a constant for Ms. Freeland since she left a successful career in journalism in 2013 to become as successful a politician.
“Chrystia’s always been prepared to provide both unsolicited and solicited advice to me and the leadership of the Ukrainian Canadian and global Ukrainian communities,” said Mr. Grod, a lawyer, and president and CEO of North American energy-management company, Rodan Energy Solutions Inc., headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario.
Mr. Bezan expects that Prime Minister Trudeau will still “lean very heavily on” Ms. Freeland for counsel on Ukraine and the bilateral relationship and that, “because of the respect that Chrystia’s earned around the Cabinet table and within Parliament, she will still have major input, as deputy prime minister, into a lot of the official government’s positions when it comes to Canada’s diplomacy abroad.”
Concerns about new foreign minister
But Mr. Bezan has concerns about her successor in the foreign-affairs portfolio, Quebec MP François-Philippe Champagne, who previously served as international trade minister following Ms. Freeland’s time in the portfolio.
“I’m worried that Champagne may adopt Dion’s appeasement strategy that could include Russia,” said Mr. Bezan, referring to Stéphane Dion, a former federal Liberal leader whom Ms. Freeland replaced as foreign minister in Mr. Trudeau’s Cabinet in early 2017.
“I think he’s going to let the department run him, and all too often what we see from diplomatic circles is that they’d rather go along to get along – and appeasement is easier than taking principled stands,” Mr. Bezan commented.
“Russia could be very happy, China could be very happy,” added Mr. Bezan, who hopes to meet with Minister Champagne soon to discuss Ukraine.
UWC President Grod credited Mr. Champagne, as international trade minister, for advancing the Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement that was finalized under Ms. Freeland’s watch on the trade file, but cautioned that Canada’s new foreign minister “needs to understand the global Russian threat.”
Said Mr. Grod: “The challenge of any new minister in this file [is that he] has to understand China, has to understand Russia, and how Canada, as a middle power, can play a valuable role.”
The UWC leader explained that one of the challenges for Canada is that “Ukraine has always been enamored with the United States,” despite Canada being “Ukraine’s best friend,” and brings to that relationship “clean hands without other vested economic interests in Russia,” which he said both Germany and France have.
“I think Canada should be leveraged in order to build support among G-7 and NATO countries,” said Mr. Grod.
“I’ve seen very recently an interest by Germany and France to try to push Ukraine into accepting a bad deal because they believe President Zelenskyy is prepared to accept peace at all costs.”
Looking to the Normandy summit
Mr. Grod added that at the December 9 Normandy summit in Paris involving Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, French President Emmanuel Macron, Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Germany and France are expected to press Ukraine to hold early elections in the occupied Donetsk and Luhansk regions, whether or not Russian-backed troops are withdrawn.
That, to Mr. Grod, is a three-against-one scenario in which Ukraine is left outnumbered in the negotiations, and provides Canada – albeit on the periphery – a chance to advance the idea of the country leading a peacekeeping mission in Ukraine’s Donbas region that the Canadian opposition Conservatives have been promoting and which Canadian Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan supports.
“Canada should take the leadership role in the U.N. peace mission in the Donbas, but it has to be on the international border between Russia and Ukraine, as visualized by [former Ukrainian President Petro] Poroshenko, and not the point of contact defined by the OSCE [Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe] monitoring mission,” said Mr. Bezan, the Conservative shadow minister for national defense.
“My concern is that Zelenskyy is ready to make a pile of concessions, and one of those may be on the line of contact,” he added.
In Ottawa for the UCC’s triennial congress, Vasyl Bodnar, Ukraine’s deputy minister of foreign affairs, said that a Canadian-led peace mission would be the second choice after Ukraine’s preference for the full implementation of the 2015 Minsk peace agreement that would involve the withdrawal of Russian-backed troops from eastern Ukraine.
But Canada has another opportunity to highlight its solidarity with Ukraine in light of events playing out on Capitol Hill in Washington, according to Mr. Grod.
He believes that Ukraine has become toxic in the U.S. as a result of the House of Representatives’ impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump in which he is accused of withholding $391 million in Congress-approved military aid to Ukraine until President Zelenskyy publicly agreed to launch an investigation of former U.S. Vice-President and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.
“That’s why it’s so important for Minister Champagne – and quite frankly for Minister Freeland – to go to Ukraine as soon as possible and show that Canada will continue to play a prominent role in supporting Ukraine,” said Mr. Grod.
“If there is a weakening of the U.S. commitment to Ukraine, it will only embolden Putin to go further.”