Chrystia Freeland Biography
Chrystia Freeland Biography:Christina Alexandra “Chrystia” Freeland, politician, journalist, editor and writer, Deputy Prime Minister of Canada, 2019–present (born 2 August 1968 in Peace River, Alberta). Chrystia Freeland is the Liberal member of Parliament (MP) for University-Rosedale. She currently serves as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance. She is the first woman in Canada to hold the latter role. She has also served as Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of International Trade. Notably, she handled the negotiation of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), as well as difficult diplomatic situations with Ukraine, Russia, Saudi Arabia and China. Freeland is also an award-winning journalist, editor and author of such books as Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else (2012).
Chrystia Freeland Early Life
Chrystia Freeland was born in Peace River, Alberta, to Donald Freeland, a lawyer and farmer, and Halyna (née Chomiak) Freeland. Gerald Baldwin, a great-uncle on her father’s side, was a Progressive Conservative MP. He was credited as the “father and grandfather” of the Access to Information Act.
Chrystia Freeland Family
Chrystia Freeland’s maternal grandparents fled Ukraine after the 1939 German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact. Her mother, Halyna, was born in a US Army-run refugee camp in Germany. Halyna Freeland ran for Parliament under the New Democratic Party (NDP) banner in Edmonton-Strathcona in 1988. She also ran a feminist socialist co-operative called Hromada, Chrystia Freeland has expressed great pride in her Ukrainian heritage. She speaks fluent Ukrainian, in addition to English, French, Russian and Italian. In her maiden speech in the House of Commons on 27 January 2014, she noted, “My mother was born in a refugee camp. Her parents, together with her and her three sisters, were grateful and delighted to find refuge here in Canada, like so many other Ukrainian Canadians.
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Chrystia Freeland Education
Chrystia Freeland attended T.A. Norris Middle School in Peace River and Old Scona Academic High School in Edmonton, Alberta. She was awarded a scholarship to attend United World College of the Adriatic in Italy from 1984 to 1986. She studied Russian history and literature at Harvard University. Her studies included an exchange in Kyiv just before the fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1993, as a Rhodes Scholar, Freeland obtained a master’s degree in Slavonic Studies from St Antony’s College at the University of Oxford.
Chrystia Freeland Career
Chrystia Freeland’s first experience in journalism was as a Ukraine-based freelance journalist. She worked for the Financial Times, the Economist and the Washington Post. She eventually served as an Eastern European correspondent for the Financial Times and headed its Moscow bureau. She was deputy editor of the Globe and Mail from 1999 to 2001. She then returned to the Financial Times as deputy editor and US managing editor. In 2010, she moved to Thomson Reuters as managing director and editor of consumer news.
Chrystia Freeland met Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau at a book signing in 2013. After Bob Rae resigned his Toronto Centre seat that June, Trudeau’s team convinced Freeland to run for the Liberals in the following by-election. Though reluctant at first, Freeland was convinced to run by the idea of serving the country. “In all of our conversations, the idea of public service was very important to [Trudeau],” she said. “And it is to me, too.”
In the federal by-election on 25 November 2013, Freeland faced NDP candidate and journalist Linda McQuaig. Freeland won with 17,194 votes (49.4 per cent) to McQuaig’s 12,640 votes (36.3 per cent).
The riding boundaries were later redrawn. Freeland stood for re-election in the new riding of University-Rosedale in the 2015 federal election. Freeland defeated NDP candidate Jennifer Hollett by more than 11,000 votes, taking 49.8 per cent of the vote.
After the 2015 election, Chrystia Freeland was appointed to Cabinet as Minister of International Trade. Around the same time, she was named one of Toronto’s 50 most influential people by Toronto Life.
In 2016, Freeland was involved in negotiations for the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between Canada and the European Union. “Canada intends to be a leader on the principles that guide international investment in the 21st century, and I will be looking to collaborate further with like-minded partners in the days ahead,” she declared.
In early 2017, the Liberal cabinet was shuffled. This was likely in response to the election of the Trump administration in the US. Freeland was promoted to Minister of Foreign Affairs but retained the Canada-US trade portfolio. It included renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
Negotiations with a mercurial new US administration were tense. “This is the most protectionist US administration since the 1930s,” Freeland told one journalist. In response, she formed a bipartisan advisory council that included Conservative politicians.