74 Facts About Chrystia Freeland

Chrystia Freeland has been the minister of transport and minister of internal trade since 2025.

Chrystia Freeland served as the 10th deputy prime minister of Canada from 2019 to 2024.

Chrystia Freeland authored Sale of the Century: Russia's Wild Ride from Communism to Capitalism and Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else.

Chrystia Freeland became an MP following a 2013 by-election for Toronto Centre.

Chrystia Freeland became deputy prime minister following the 2019 election, where she became minister of intergovernmental affairs.

Chrystia Freeland presented her first federal budget in 2021, which introduced a national child care program, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Chrystia Freeland played a critical role in the Canadian response to the Russo-Ukrainian War, including the implementation of sanctions on Russia and sending aid to Ukraine after the invasion in 2022.

Chrystia Freeland's resignation led to a cabinet shuffle, calls for a vote of no confidence from opposition parties, and Trudeau's eventual resignation as prime minister and party leader the following month.

On January 17,2025, Chrystia Freeland confirmed she would run for the Liberal leadership.

Chrystia Freeland was described in 2019 as one of the most influential Cabinet ministers of Trudeau's premiership.

Chrystia Freeland was born in Peace River, Alberta, on August 2,1968.

Chrystia Freeland's father, Donald Freeland, was a farmer and lawyer and a member of the Liberal Party, and her Ukrainian mother, Halyna Chomiak, was a lawyer, and ran for the New Democratic Party in Edmonton Strathcona in the 1988 federal election.

Chrystia Freeland's parents divorced when she was nine years old, though she continued to live with both of them.

Chrystia Freeland was an activist from a young age, organizing a strike in grade five to protest her school's exclusive enrichment classes.

Chrystia Freeland attended Old Scona Academic High School in Edmonton, Alberta for two years before attending the United World College of the Adriatic, in Italy, on a merit scholarship from the Alberta government for a project that sought to promote international peace and understanding.

Chrystia Freeland translated the stories of locals who had witnessed covered trucks and "puddles of blood in the road" that predated the Nazi invasion, adding evidence that the site was actually the result of Stalinist repression.

The KGB surveilled Chrystia Freeland and tapped her phone calls, and documented the young Canadian activist delivering money, video and audio recording equipment, and a personal computer to contacts in Ukraine.

On her return from a trip to London in March 1989, Chrystia Freeland was denied re-entry to the Soviet Union.

Chrystia Freeland worked as an intern for United Press International in London in the summer of 1990.

Chrystia Freeland began her career in journalism as a stringer for the Financial Times, The Washington Post, and The Economist while working in Ukraine.

Chrystia Freeland later worked for the Financial Times in London as a deputy editor, and then as an editor for its weekend edition, FT.

Chrystia Freeland served as Moscow bureau chief and Eastern Europe correspondent for the Financial Times.

From 1999 to 2001, Chrystia Freeland served as the deputy editor of The Globe and Mail.

Chrystia Freeland was a weekly columnist for The Globe and Mail.

Chrystia Freeland is the author of Sale of the Century: Russia's Wild Ride from Communism to Capitalism, as well as Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else.

On July 26,2013, Chrystia Freeland left journalism to enter politics.

Chrystia Freeland sought the nomination for the Liberal Party in Toronto Centre to replace Bob Rae, who was stepping down to become chief negotiator and counsel for the Matawa First Nations in Northern Ontario's Ring of Fire.

Chrystia Freeland won 49 per cent of the vote and was elected.

In 2013, Freeland received campaign contributions from Paul M Grod, former president of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress and current president of the Ukrainian World Congress and Ukrainian-Canadian businessman James C Temerty.

Chrystia Freeland supported seizing personal assets and banning travel as part of economic sanction programs against Yanukovych and members of his government.

Chrystia Freeland met community leaders and members of the government in Kyiv, including Mustafa Dzhemilev, leader of the Crimean Tatars; Vitali Klitschko, leader of the Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform; and Ukrainian MP Petro Poroshenko, who was later elected president of Ukraine in May 2014.

Since 2009, Chrystia Freeland has been a regular attendee of the Yalta European Strategy annual meetings founded and sponsored by Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk.

Chrystia Freeland was one of thirteen Canadians banned from travelling to Russia under retaliatory sanctions imposed by Russian president Vladimir Putin in March 2014.

Chrystia Freeland defeated NDP challenger Jennifer Hollett with 50 per cent of the vote.

Chrystia Freeland was involved in negotiations leading up to the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, between Canada and the European Union, former prime minister Stephen Harper's legacy project.

Chrystia Freeland sponsored Bill C-47, which allowed Canada to join the Arms Trade Treaty in 2019.

Chrystia Freeland said the violence against the Rohingya "looks a lot like ethnic cleansing and that is not acceptable".

Chrystia Freeland issued a statement via Twitter on August 2,2018, expressing Canada's concern over the arrest of Samar Badawi, a human rights activist and sister of imprisoned Saudi blogger Raif Badawi.

Chrystia Freeland asked for help from allies including Germany, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom.

In September 2018, Chrystia Freeland raised the issue of Xinjiang internment camps and human rights abuses against the Uyghurs in a meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

In January 2019, at the request of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Canada granted asylum to 18-year-old Saudi teenager Rahaf Mohammed, who was fleeing her abusive family in Kuwait; Chrystia Freeland personally greeted Mohammed at Toronto Pearson International Airport.

Chrystia Freeland condemned Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, who had "seized power through fraudulent and anti-democratic elections".

Chrystia Freeland joined the World Economic Forum's board of trustees in 2019.

In October 2019, Chrystia Freeland condemned the unilateral Turkish invasion of the Kurdish areas in Syria.

Chrystia Freeland took over the intergovernmental affairs portfolio following the 2019 election when she was appointed deputy prime minister.

Chrystia Freeland presented her first federal budget to the House of Commons on April 19,2021.

In June 2022, Chrystia Freeland testified before a special parliamentary committee to answer questions about the decision.

Chrystia Freeland described her appearance as "adversarial", and several committee members stated that she was evasive and did not offer new information.

Chrystia Freeland was at the forefront of the Canadian government's response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in late February 2022.

Chrystia Freeland was the first to call for sanctions on the Central Bank of Russia, which were eventually imposed, and she spoke nearly daily with Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal.

On December 16,2024, Chrystia Freeland unexpectedly resigned from the Trudeau cabinet hours before she was to deliver the fall economic statement, citing policy disagreements with Trudeau on tax breaks, disbursements, and tariffs proposed by US President-elect Donald Trump on Canadian goods.

On January 17,2025, Chrystia Freeland announced her candidacy in the 2025 Liberal Party of Canada leadership election.

Chrystia Freeland received 11,134 votes in the election, placing in a distant second behind winner Mark Carney who received 131,674 of the vote.

Chrystia Freeland has described her political philosophy as being "simply Canadian", as well as feminist.

Chrystia Freeland specifically holds economically and fiscally centrist policy positions aligned with the aims of public economics while being a proponent of a liberal internationalist foreign policy.

Chrystia Freeland argues that the rise of plutocracy is due to advances in information technology and expansion of free trade.

Chrystia Freeland explains that, within a global perspective, free trade has been overwhelmingly positive within the developing countries, citing per capita income growth in China and India between 1973 and 2002, but that income inequality has worsened in developed and developing economies.

Chrystia Freeland further explains that corporations have benefitted financially from economic upheaval, with expanded access to labour, customers, and capital lowering traditional barriers to market entry, where she goes on to cite the growth and success of Facebook under Mark Zuckerberg in challenging Google's share of the market.

Chrystia Freeland has argued that the financially affluent "have long recognized that philanthropy, in addition to its moral rewards, can serve as a pathway to social acceptance and even immortality", citing examples such as George Soros's efforts through his Open Society Foundations and Peter Peterson's utilization of a US$1 billion windfall from Blackstone Inc to fund political efforts to limiting entitlement spending, among others.

Chrystia Freeland argues that a measure of the importance of public engagement for those who are financially affluent is the pace in which they are developing private foundations and think tanks.

Chrystia Freeland contends that the "new plutocracy" are "forming a global community, and their ties to one another are increasingly closer than their ties to hoi polloi back home".

Chrystia Freeland explains that the American commercial elite engaged in this trend later than their contemporaries internationally, but that they are catching up, with a younger generation of CEOs having significantly more international business experience.

Chrystia Freeland cites technological innovation and global integration as factors for the industry's growth in the United States amidst disruptive technological advancement and change.

Chrystia Freeland has praised the efforts of Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke and European Central Bank president Mario Draghi for respectively growing the American economy and strengthening the eurozone after the Great Recession.

In 2012, Chrystia Freeland wrote for The Atlantic that due to new discoveries and technological developments, the end of the fossil fuel industry is not imminent.

Chrystia Freeland explains that this trend will lead to new winners in the global economy such as Brazil, while it could complicate domestic policies in other major oil producers and exporters such as Canada.

Chrystia Freeland added that this trend will intensify political debate around environmental issues, such as the controversy over Keystone XL.

Chrystia Freeland instead argues that traditional revolutionary movements, such as the Bolsheviks, Solidarity, and the African National Congress, were centralized with a core of devoted members with the ability to act as a government-in-waiting.

Chrystia Freeland is married to Graham Bowley, a British writer and reporter for The New York Times.

Chrystia Freeland has lived in Toronto since the summer of 2013 when she returned from abroad to run for election.

Chrystia Freeland's paternal grandfather, Wilbur Chrystia Freeland, was a farmer and lawyer who rode in the annual Calgary Stampede; his sister, Beulah, was the wife of a federal member of Parliament, Ged Baldwin.

Chrystia Freeland's paternal grandmother, Helen Caulfield, was a World War II war bride from Glasgow.

Chrystia Freeland's mother, Halyna Chomiak, was born at a hospital administered by the US Army; her parents were staying at the displaced persons camp at the spa resort in Bad Worishofen in Bavaria, Germany.

In 2017, when Russian-affiliated websites, such as Russia Insider and New Cold War, further publicized Chomiak's connection to Nazism, Chrystia Freeland and her spokespeople responded by claiming that this was a Russian disinformation campaign during her appointment to the position of minister of foreign affairs.