Freeland got straight to work, announcing $38 billion in new COVID-19 initiatives on Thursday
On Wednesday, Chrystia Freeland was named Canada’s first female minister of finance. The former deputy prime minister replaces the embattled Bill Morneau, who resigned both his position as minister and as member of Parliament shortly after a Monday face-to-face with prime minister Justin Trudeau.
Freeland, who has represented the ridings of Toronto Centre and University-Rosedale in the House of Commons since 2013, is arguably one of the country’s most recognizable political names. She was named minister of foreign affairs in 2017 and took on the role of deputy prime minister following the 2019 election. An award-winning author and respected journalist, Freeland may be most well-known for her participation in the protracted and testy negotiations that resulted in the new iteration of the North American Free Trade Agreement, known north of the forty-ninth parallel as the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement.
On Wednesday, CBC’s Mark Gollom pointed out a key difference between Freeland and several of her predecessors: a lack of Bay Street bona fides. Morneau, the former CEO of HR firm Morneau Shepell, followed the likes of Chretien-era finance minister Paul Martin, a former CEO himself, and Michael Wilson, Brian Mulroney’s finance minister, who was a successful investment executive on Bay Street.
Freeland, a Rhodes Scholar, is known more as a negotiator. Her prominent role in the CUSMA talks gave her "better preparation to be finance minister than anybody would have gotten on Bay Street," according to Dwight Duncan, former Ontario provincial finance minister under Dalton McGuinty.
"What she has that's incredibly important to a finance minister is good judgment, sound political skills, a global background, a lot of exposure in international financial markets and players,” Duncan told CBC. “So, I think she's probably one of the better-prepared ministers of finance we've seen in a long time."
The Washington Post complimented Freeland’s “competence and capacity in her past portfolios”, but wondered what her plan for the COVID-19 recovery might consist of. Freeland suggested “bold new solutions” at a Tuesday news conference, but provided no details. The author of Plutocrats: The Rise of the Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else should be expected to take a critical look at the tenability of a growth-at-all-costs economy, but progressive policies have had a tendency to wither on the vine under Trudeau’s Liberal government.
In one of her first public appearances as finance minister, Freeland on Thursday announced a one-month extension of the Canada Emergency Response Benefit and provided further clarity into what the end of CERB and eventual transition to a new employment insurance program for Canadians impacted by COVID-19 will entail. The new reforms are expected to cost $37 billion.
In an August 18 editorial, J.P. Boutros, Mortgage Professionals Canada’s director of government relations and regulatory affairs, said the group is eager to discuss with Freeland the implementation of changes to the qualifying rate used Canada’s mortgage stress as well as MPC’s recommendations to the Standing Committee on Finance.
Not everyone applauded Freeland’s appointment. The Toronto Sun predictably singled out the finance minister’s comments on the leading role green jobs should play in Canada’s COVID-19 recovery, describing her stance as mimicking “Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s absurd and naive rhetoric that green energy is going to magically lead us out of the COVID-19 recession.”
If the Sun doesn’t like you, you’re off to a pretty good start.
