[1]
By John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with [2]
Chrystia Freeland’s final leap at political power in her 12-year attempt to rule Canada ended yesterday when she fell flat on her face.
Prime Minister Mark Carney, whose push has proved more kinetic than Freeland’s jump, allowed this to be understood when he offered Freeland the less than face-saving post of reconstructing the Ukraine which her warfighting campaign against Russia has all but destroyed. The cost to Canada of this destruction since the Special Military Operation began in February 2022 has been C$22 billion [3], including about C$13 billion in loans which the Kiev regime cannot repay but which are being serviced from the interest earned on Russian assets seized by the NATO allies.
Freeland’s ouster was so rushed, there was no time for her to explain what the hurry was in her departure, nor for Carney to prepare what Freeland would be doing as his special envoy to the Ukraine without any staff or diplomatic rank [4].
In his official release, Carney appeared not to know that Freeland is resigning her parliamentary seat.
According to Carney’s announcement [5], Freeland had “helped to secure historic trade negotiations, guide the response to a global pandemic, complete early learning and child care agreements across Canada, and…remove all federal barriers to internal trade.” Not a word about the priorities of Freeland’s career, war against Russia and war against China. “I have asked Chrystia to serve as Canada’s new Representative for the Reconstruction of Ukraine,” Carney said, “in addition to her responsibilities as a Member of Parliament.”
Carney is believed to have authorized press leaks ahead of his cabinet meeting on Tuesday to reveal Freeland was resigning her combined portfolio of internal trade and transport. In the rush, Carney took several hours before deciding to split the portfolios and assign them to different individuals [4].
After the cabinet meeting Freeland avoided the press. Returning to her office, she drafted the social media post [6]of a letter which she addressed, not to the prime minister, but to “dear neighbours, dear Canadians.” She then announced: “I do not intend to run in the next federal election.” As her reason for the exit, Freeland claimed she “is not leaving to spend more time with my family or because the burden of elected office is too heavy to bear.” Instead, “after twelve fulfilling years in public life, I know that now is the right time for me to make way for others and to seek fresh changes for myself.”
Freeland had her 57th birthday last month.
A Canadian source in a position to know commented that there have been growing policy differences between Carney and Freeland. “Carney has signaled his willingness to lower tariffs on Chinese electric vehicle (EV) imports in order to secure Chinese cooperation on their tariffs on Canadian canola. Freeland is recognized in Beijing as a China-hater who, as we know, made sabotaging Canada’s relationship with Beijing a top priority.”
Canola is Canada’s most valuable field crop and farm export, with farm cash receipts of C$12.9 billion in 2024. China had been importing about two-thirds of the Canadian canola crop until Beijing imposed a 100% tariff on canola oil and canola meal in March, and then a 76% tariff on canola seed in August [7]. This was retaliation against a series of hostile Canadian political and trade attacks on China, culminating in August 2024 in a 100% tariff on EV imports and a 25% tariff on imported Chinese steel and aluminium [8].
Freeland’s “past behaviour”, said the source, “displays that she’s not at all trustworthy, let alone capable of putting the government’s goals in front of her own ambitions. Other members of cabinet didn’t hide their dislike of her from Carney. She has the reputation of blowing up cabinet meetings with clumsy, hysterical attempts to run everyone else’s business. That has threatened Carney. Freeland then underestimated his ruthlessness in getting rid of her.”
Beginning with the first reports in 2017 of Freeland’s grandfather’s career as a German military collaborator in World War II — spy, propagandist and genocide profiteer — to Freeland’s plotting with Biden Administration officials to replace Justin Trudeau as prime minister, the archive of DwB stories on Freeland [9] has reached 82. An album of the Freeland cartoons has been published in The Complete Dances with Bears Comic Book [10], Chapter 5.
Here’s a selection at their original links for a keepsake of Freeland’s passing, and for the one thing she has been incapable of since she first arrived in Moscow as a journalist thirty years ago – laughter.
January 19, 2017 [11]:
[12]March 16, 2017 [13]:
[14]May 14, 2017 [15]:
[16]June 18, 2017 [17]:
[18]June 11, 2018 [19]:
[20]April 22, 2019 [21]:
[22]January 26, 2020 [23]:
[24]April 3, 2024 [25]:
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