Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau faces the biggest test of his political career after Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, long one of his most powerful and loyal ministers, announced Monday that she was resigning from the Cabinet.
Freeland, also deputy prime minister, said that Trudeau had told her Friday that he no longer wanted her to serve as finance minister and offered her another role in the Cabinet.
She announced her resignation in a letter to Trudeau on Monday, in which she said the two have been “at odds about the best path forward for Canada”, and pointed to the “grave challenge” posed by Trump’s policy of “aggressive economic nationalism”.
Her resignation came hours before her due to provide an annual fiscal government update in parliament.
However, in her resignation letter to the prime minister, she said that leaving the Cabinet was the only “honest and viable path.”
“For the past number of weeks, you and I have found ourselves at odds about the best path forward for Canada,” Freeland said.
Freeland and Trudeau disagreed about a two-month sales tax holiday and $250 Canadian ($175) checks to Canadians that were recently announced.
Freeland said that Canada is dealing with US President-elect Donald Trump’s threat to impose sweeping 25% tariffs and should eschew “costly political gimmicks” it can “ill afford.”
In this November 2018 photo, then-President Donald Trump arrives to deliver a statement along with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, on the signing of a new free trade agreement in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
“Our country is facing a grave challenge,” Freeland said in the letter. “That means keeping our fiscal powder dry today, so we have the reserves we may need for a coming tariff war.”
The resignation comes as Freeland, who chaired a Cabinet committee on US relations, was set to deliver the fall economic statement and likely announce border security measures designed to help Canada avoid Trump’s tariffs. The US president-elect has threatened to impose a 25% tax on all products entering the US from Canada and Mexico unless they stem the numbers of migrants and drugs.
