The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - The Making of Chrystia Freeland

Episode Date: February 5, 2025

When former finance minister Chrystia Freeland resigned due to her opposition to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's fiscal policy, it sent shockwaves through Parliament Hill. Now she wants her boss's job. But who was Chrystia Freeland before her meteoric rise in Canadian politics? Host Steve Paikin talks to journalist Catherine Tsalikis about her new biography: "Chrystia: From Peace Valley to Parliament Hill." See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Matt Nethersole. And I'm Tiff Lam. From TVO Podcasts, this is Queries. This season, we're asking, when it comes to defending your beliefs, how far is too far? We follow one story from the boardroom to the courtroom. And seek to understand what happens when beliefs collide. Where does freedom of religion end and freedom from discrimination begin? That's this season on Queries, In Good Faith, a TVO original podcast.

Follow and listen wherever you get your podcasts. When former finance minister Christia Freeland resigned due to her opposition to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's fiscal policy, it sent shockwaves through Parliament Hill. Now she wants her boss's job. But who was Christia Freeland before her meteoric rise in Canadian politics? Catherine Tlilikas is the author of a new biography, it's called Chrystia, from Peace Valley to Parliament Hill, and she joins us now for more.

It's great to meet you and have you here. Thank you so much for having me, Steve. You can write about anybody. Why Chrystia Freeland? I think there's two main answers to this. The first is that there's just not that many women here in Canada who reach the heights that she does in politics. I was on maternity leave in 2020. In the summer is the pandemic. Christa Freeland was appointed our first ever female finance minister. I could barely get myself out the door and I considered it

a win if I could take my baby to the park. And she, there she was, mother of three, and not only finance minister, but the deputy prime minister, number two to Justin Trudeau. So I wanted to know how she did it. The second reason is that we also don't have many stories about Canadian women in public life. True. When I first started thinking about doing this, I tried to find new examples in the literature of things that I could kind of emulate and I tried to find no examples in the literature of things that I could kind of emulate to inspire me. And I could not find a biography of a female Canadian politician written by a female Canadian journalist. I just couldn't. So I thought in a way this could be how I could contribute to that canon. Is this an authorized or unauthorized biography?

This is unauthorized, which I've been saying makes it sound a lot more salacious than it actually is All it means of course is that the subject had no editorial input or control over the book I Didn't speak with her. I did I did ask at the beginning you I went to her book launch You tried very hard to get her to participate and for whatever reason they didn't see fit to give you an interview at the end Of the day. Are you disappointed by that? In the end, I think it probably worked out for the best. She knows a lot of journalists.

So in the course of interviewing people for this book, I spoke with a lot of journalists and they said, you know, the second you speak with her, it becomes a bit of a different book. So you want to be able to keep a bit of arm's distance, a little bit of objectivity. And I think that was good. I was able to speak with her sister, a couple of her aunts her best friends so I feel like I got close and but this way I was able to kind of paint a portrait the way other people see her and I was I was happy with her. As the title suggests her life started in Peace River

Alberta in 1968 what was her childhood like? She describes it as magical so she was born in this exactly she was raised on a farm in Peace River. Her earliest memory was driving with her dad on a combine. And she rode horses. It was quite wonderful. I think that instilled in her a real love of Canada. Being up there, I got to visit there.

It is just stunning, gorgeous, expansive. So I think that that identity is really rooted deep in her. But her parents divorced when she was eight, so she moved with her mother and her sister to Edmonton. And there she was raised in this Ukrainian emigrate community, and so her maternal grandparents had come over after the Second World War, settled in Edmonton. And there she was thrown into these conversations about geopolitics, the future of the Soviet Union, would Ukraine ever gain its independence?

And so I think that kind of gave her this one eye on the outside world. I'm gonna pick up on that again in a second, but I wanna go back to something that I learned about in your book, didn't know beforehand. She was born Kristina Alexandra Freeland, but as a teenager she decided to change her name to Kristia, how come? Yes, right.

So her elementary school teachers know her as Christy. It was an homage to her Ukrainian heritage. She visited for the first time when she was 12 with her mom, her aunt, and her sister. And this was still when Ukraine was behind the Iron Curtain. So it was quite an experience, realizing what it means to live in an authoritarian regime. This was still when Ukraine was behind the Iron Curtain. So it was quite an experience, realizing

what it means to live in an authoritarian regime. But so she came back, and she felt like this was, she didn't want to gloss over, I think, that identity. It was very much a part of her. Her aunt was also named Christy, and went through the same thing. And she chugged over with her aunt, who told her, they tried in Canada, they tried to assimilate me. They tried to see me, they tried not to make me as other, but I am other.

And so that's why I wanted to embrace that. And that's what Christia felt as well. So she changed it. The whole grandfather thing has been a bit of a controversy since she got into public life. You want to first of all say what it is and then tell us how she handled it? So her maternal grandfather during the Second World War and Fled from he was in Western Ukraine

But as the Red Army the Russians were approaching he decided to take his chances with with the Germans with the Nazis Because he saw them as friendlier to the goal of independent Ukraine, which is what he always wanted So he went to Poland to Krakow and he worked for a paper there that was owned by the Nazi government and controlled by them. So it was very anti-Semitic, filled with hate-filled propaganda. But it was also pro-Ukrainian, so it kind of fit his intellectual leanings. And it meant that he was insulated from a lot of the harsh totalitarian rule that others in the city, the country, and across Europe were faced with. So he... that came out, the fact that her grandfather worked for this newspaper, while Chrystia Freeland was foreign minister. And I think the way

in which she addressed it, she didn't come out and say, you know, it was a nuanced time, we have to kind of look at it through the lens of the time. She said it was Soviet attempts to disinform. Yeah, disinform. Exactly. So that puzzled me. That was, I think, one of the only things in this, you know, going through her life. She's a journalist.

She knows her history. She knows how important it is to tell the truth, evidence, facts. She loves those things. But yeah, so I'm not sure. I think it was she felt it was personal, perhaps. And her colleague told me there's an information hoardiness about her sometimes. But yeah it was interesting. I think a lot of her generation would have similar grandparents who went through similar

nuanced things. But yeah, yeah, I guess that's how she chose to address it. Her mother ran for the NDP in the 1988 election. How much of a seed do we think that planted? I think she grew up surrounded by politics. Her parents were lawyers. And her dad was, of course, a lawyer and a farmer at the same time.

But I don't think it was inevitable that she would have ended up in politics. And she, as I have in there, at the age of three, expressed an interest in becoming a lawyer. And when she got to Harvard, she still wasn't sure what she wanted to do, maybe academic, maybe a lawyer. She ultimately went into journalism for two decades. So I think she thought that was a way

that she could be at the center of things and do something exciting. But I think she saw the change that her mother was able to bring through her activities. Her mother was a trailblazing feminist lawyer. She later helped Ukraine build its like a new constitution, a legal system for Ukraine when it finally got its independence. And she saw how her mother had the ability to affect people's lives.

And I think that's what she wanted to do when she did enter politics. And her mother died young. That's right. She was only 60. This was 2007. So Christa was? She was in her four, almost 1968. So, four. Student math, student math. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But yeah, she was in her 40s and she was living in New York City. Her mom had given up her career to come and move in with the family so that Christy could flourish in hers, which I think allowed her to rise in the way that she did. There's a very interesting line attributed to her in which she's asked, what do you think was sort of one of your biggest regrets? And she said, I wish I had been a more serious student, which is an odd thing for somebody who went to Harvard and Oxford to say. How much more serious can you get?

Exactly. So what's that all about? So I asked friends about this because I was puzzled by that as well. By all accounts, she was a stellar student and made the most of her time at Harvard and Oxford. I think so at Harvard, she spent a year, her third academic year was spent on exchange, again in Kyiv, in Ukraine, behind the Iron Curtain. And that kind of hooked her into that story of Ukraine, its future, and where it was going. And so she ended up returning there.

She pushed her schooling by a semester. She graduated a semester out of turn. I think what one friend told me was that she didn't graduate student come out. She didn't excel at the top top academically. She did well, but I think maybe she was imagining what it would be like to have more time to just sit there and read and think. Christy was doing things.

She was out there, she was starting her reporting career. So that's my best guess is that she feels like, and her sister told me she worked her in another way. She made connections at Harvard. She met one of her professors, Larry Summers, who would go on to become the chief economist at the World Bank, future US Treasury secretary, a close friend and mentor to this day. So she definitely worked hard, just perhaps in different, not as bookish ways, perhaps. Let's talk about her time in journalism because she had several high profile positions at

the Financial Times, the Globe and Mail, Thomson Reuters. You spoke to many journalists who knew her and worked with her back in the day. What's the verdict on her time in journalism? She was tenacious. More than a couple of people described her as ruthless, which surprised me. The way she worked to get her story, she was prepared. She was charming. She would lean on, early in her days in Ukraine and Russia,

she would lean on this identity as, you know, I'm just a farmer's girl, nothing to see here. And people would open up to her. These very powerful men, and Russia, the oligarchs, kind of not realizing that this petite woman was committing to memory everything they were saying, and that the next day it would be on the front page of the Financial Times.

You say petite, and for people who have not seen her in person. Right, she's 5'2". She's, you think she's 5'2"? I mean, I've been told she's 5'2". Her mother was like under 5 feet, I think so. I was gonna say, I've met her, I've stood beside her. Yes.

I don't think there's a chance she's 5'2". I'm also 5'2", so I'm like, I don't know. Maybe in heels, right? Yeah, maybe in heels. Which she wears rarely. But that's it. She was like a dog with a bone. And I think that the lessons that she

takes from those days is, as an editor, there was 101 decisions that needed to be made. And if she didn't make them, the paper would not go to bed at night. So she drew on those lessons in the pandemic and other crises in government. Just make the decision, because sometimes not making it is worse. That's one of the lessons I know that she took from those crazy years.

When she wrote that what turned out to be very famous book, Plutocrats, and we had her on this program talking about that, there was a 2012 book launch for her at which she ran into a guy named Justin Trudeau. And they had a conversation. First of a few few I gather. How did it go? What happened? So that initial conversation, you know, went well but she didn't really think she'd see him again. But unbeknownst to her, at the party was also Katie Telford, who would obviously become Justin Trudeau's campaign

manager and then chief of staff. And Katie had a chat with Christia's dad who told her, you know hey I think my daughter should run for you guys and at the time of course liberals were in third place looking for anyone with credibility to our power to bring into the party and so Katie mentioned this to Justin Trudeau in the car on their way home or on the way to a different event and Trudeau looked at her and said you know that's a great idea you should make that a project for us and so they did they kept in touch with her and said, you know what, that's a great idea. You should make that a project for us. And so they did. They kept in touch with her.

It took, you know, for months it was a no, or maybe in the future. But then in 2013, Bob Ray stepped down as an MP in Toronto Centre. And all of a sudden there was a vacancy. And so it became a bit more real. And it was still a no more than a yes for a few weeks. But he did. Trudeau convinced her. He, I think he really believed in the fact that she could do it as a mother you know like that was

he was not concerned with that part of it and she believed in his values and and so she you know he he got her on board and it was off to the races as he said on the way out you know we had a pretty good close partnership for a long time more to come on that let's do an excerpt from the book Sheld, you want to bring this up and I'll read along for those listening on podcast. In politics, she has successfully employed the traits that served her so well in journalism. A seemingly endless supply of energy, a quirky charm, a capacity for coalition building, her dogged determination, a propensity for loyalty. Friends and colleagues describe her as principled but pragmatic,

willing to consult widely and hear out the other side before landing on a decision. As a politician, she subscribes to the theory of positive intent, assuming until proven otherwise that the actions of her counterparts stem from a place of goodwill. Okay, let's unpack some of this here. Since Mark Carney announced his bid for the liberal leadership as well, he has captured the lion's share of MP and cabinet minister endorsements. And I wonder how you think she is reacting to the fact that all of those allies who were supposedly so loyal are not with her right now. It's funny, as I saw cabinet minister after cabinet minister endorse Mark Kearney, and not the woman with whom they've

worked so closely over the past few years, I thought, like on a personal level, that's got to sting, right, if it were me. But she's not easily offended. She puts her head down. I have a story. It's not in the book. But one of her restaurants from Harvard told me,

when they first met, the friend really loved her. And she was like, hey, this friend, she can go somewhere. But Christie wore this patchouli scent. And it was just so pretty. She did what? This patchouli scent. This was the 80s.

Like, basically a perfume, right? It was kind of like potpourri-ish. And the friend was like, I just can't deal with this. Like, I have to tell her. And she was so scared because she really liked her. But she told Christie, you know, I was listening. You have to do something about this scent. And Christie was like, oh, you don't like it? No problem. I won't wear it anymore.

And so the friend tells me this, because you know, they're still friends to this day, and she says, she's not easily offended. She doesn't hold people's decisions against them. And that's how she is able to build these coalitions and reach across aisles and make friends on the other side. I don't think she'll be paying much attention to that, honestly. I know she doesn't read about herself, she doesn't cool herself. I think she's incredibly focused. To her, it's not over until it's over. And she's used to being underestimated. Okay, but, I mean, this is a unique situation. She is running against Mark Carney.

He is godfather to one of her kids. These leadership races invariably are elbows up, very bruising affairs. They are tough on relationships, never mind deep family friendships as this is. How does that relationship survive this competition? And so you read the part about her as describing to this theory of positive intent, right?

She assumes the other side has goodwill. I will be curious to see how it plays out. So far, there has not been any personal jazz, muzzlinging. She did kind of try and call them out or try and get them to commit to running in the next election. But I wonder if, I'm not sure. Maybe she can do it. Maybe they can keep it cleaner than we're expecting.

They certainly won't be able to do that with Pier Poliev. Whoever wins and goes to the general election, that will be, I feel like, a very, a much dirtier affair. But she's, I think she's able to compartmentalize. I don't want to put words or sentiments into her mouth, but she's very practical. And she has kept friends through former bosses who maybe the situation wasn't great, but is still friends with. She's been through these very stressful NAF negotiations under the first Trump presidency, where

I spoke with both the negotiators on the US side and the Mexican side, all of whom had glowing things to say. You go through this crazy negotiation, and somehow they call her a friend. They go to her house, and they eat together. She cooked for them. Yeah, of course, right? She asked you all sorts of questions.

Yeah, so I wonder if maybe there's a way to do it kind of higher. I don't know. I know the climate is so charged right now. Well, how about the, I mean, did you see the interview on CBC News Network on the weekend that Rosie Barton did with her? Yes, yeah.

I mean- That was, well, okay, let me follow up on that because that was as tough an interview as I've ever seen. Never mind Rosie do with her, maybe with anyone. It was really hard. But here's the point. It's a change election. And how does Christa Freeland convince liberals that she represents change given that she

has been, as Justin Trudeau said at his farewell press conference, the closest person he worked with for the last 10 years? I don't know if you can do it. I don't know. And I know Mark Carney isn't, you know, maybe the outsider that he might want to portray himself as, but he is. He is different. He is not, he was not a cabinet minister. She was his right-hand woman from the very beginning. He put her in these successive cabinet

positions where she delivered for him. She did all the big jobs. So many people told me that Justin Trudeau's policies were really Christian freelance policies. Like former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, who I spoke with before he he passed said the signature achievement of this government will be coming out of NAFTA with an okay deal and she was the point person on that. Child care is a major policy that was her it wasn't coming from Trudeau it was her who pushed that you know the idea for that she pushed it through. I don't know that you can I know she's trying you know disavowing the carbon tax and the capital gains tax I'm not sure I I know she's trying, you know, disavowing the carbon tax, the capital gains tax.

I'm not sure. I think when I see the cabinet, you know, her colleagues endorsing Carney, I also, I wonder if it's not personal. Maybe they truly believe that he is the best chance at change. The Trudeau brand is so toxic right now and she is just so tied up in that. Manja, her position on this has been, you know, she was on morning Joe and she was asked about the carbon tax and how can you change your mind on the carbon tax? She said well, I listen to the people people don't want it. So we're changing our mind. Yeah, can that work? I Think she believes it can she's

Friends have told me she is incredibly pragmatic And so if she feels like that's the way the wind is blowing she will you turn and that's fine And I think that's fine, and I think she's okay with that Will people see it for, look at it as a game? I'm not sure if it will change people's mind. But it's right in that Pierre Pellier said, we're going to be in this carbon tax election next time. And look, what Donald Trump is doing

has maybe shifted the priorities. It's not going to be a carbon tax election. It's not going to be so, right? No, not looking that way now. It's about our sovereignty be a carbon tax election. I don't think so, right? No, not looking that way now. About our sovereignty now, what? Yeah, so I think her battle is overcoming that connection that she has with the prime minister. I don't know how you separate that record.

Catherine, do you know she's read the book? I don't know either way. Like I said, she does not look herself up. She doesn't Google herself. And I feel like she has a bit going on right now, so I would be surprised if she had. Maybe in the future, but as far as I know, I actually don't know. Either way, yeah.

I don't think. I presume at some point you would love to sit down over a cup of coffee with her and just sort of have a chance to meet her. You know what, it would be so surreal. Because I never actually, for the book, sat down with her, I didn't talk with her. I actually had never met her.

I interviewed her once over the phone in 2015 for when she was running then. I think it would be quite surreal to see someone whose life I have delved into and thought about for so many years. Think about it, you know her life better than probably anybody in the world except her. Right?

It's bizarre. I mean, I think so. You've talked to dozens of people who know her. So that's why I spoke with, I think it was around 130 people, and I wanted, I needed to do that to feel like I had any sort of authority because everything in there, my voice isn't really in this book. Everything in there is attributed to someone in one way or another. And that's how I felt we could best, I wanted to portray her life for those who are interested

and leave the opining up to the reader. You can kind of make your own decision based off the stories in there. Let me ask you one last thing, and that is that she's had a very impressive career so far. And you know, you and I both talk to lots of people who think she could do the job, but were she given the opportunity to do it? I have also talked to lots of people, and I'm sure you saw her campaign kickoff, which did not go well.

And many people have observed that, despite having been in the arena for the last 10 years, her communication skills and her ability to kind of convey whatever you're supposed to be able to convey in that job have not improved all that much over 10 years. How does that make sense? Okay, so I mentioned her, the way she addressed the grandfather story was puzzling to me. Something else that was puzzling to me is this communication style.

So many people I spoke with from her early journalism years through the government years speak of her ability to connect with people and modulate herself to whoever she's speaking with, whether that's the person on the doorstep talking about immigration. But that's one on one, not through a TV lens. Perhaps that's it. Perhaps it's an inability to project. I think she has a real problem with the way she comes off to the average voter.

I have heard detractors say she comes off as almost condescending, holier than thou. School marmish. School marmish. Is there a word? It's a sexist expression, but that's what they say. Out of touch. I'm thinking there was that when she made the comment,

everyone needs to tighten their belts. A couple of years ago, my family is cancelling our Disney Plus subscription, that was meant in an earnest way. She is really frugal. When she first became a cabinet minister, she asked if she could have a futon in her office to save money. She really believes this, but it wasn't taken that way. And so she, you know, the inability to see that,

it might not be taken in the way that she meant it. I don't know, my only guess is that she just doesn't wanna, I know she doesn't pay lip service to fix image, things like her clothes and what she wears. I feel like this is maybe kind of tangential to that. She just, she feels like she has more important things to do. And that is an area where she hasn't put any work into, perhaps. I do notice, I feel like she got a new social media person

because there are some really like sassy videos on Instagram. But will that be enough? Yeah, and I think being a politician, she doesn't have that natural charisma that Trudeau does, Obama. But then again, I spoke with a lot of people who know her and Carney and a lot of them told me they couldn't see Carney in politics because he's you know technocrat gets easily frustrated with people who he feels are irrational and

they saw her as better able to do the retail politicians side of things I don't know March the 9th we'll know for sure right exactly TBD well regardless I hope you get that cup of coffee with you someday. I'm sure you would really appreciate that. A glass of wine, I feel like that's more appropriate. Maybe some wine, okay. The book is called Christia, From Peace River to Parliament Hill, and we are delighted that it has brought Catherine Salikis into our studio.

Thanks, Catherine. Thank you, Steve.