The Decibel - Chrystia Freeland Resigns Takes New Role With Ukraine

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

Today is Chrystia Freeland’s last day in Canadian politics, but she still plans to work in government – just not this one. On Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that he had appointed the former Liberal cabinet minister his new economic adviser. The news sparked a week of backlash in Ottawa, as many raised concerns that a sitting member of parliament working with a foreign government created a conflict of interest.The Globe’s senior reporter, Stephanie Levitz, joins The Decibel from Ottawa. She’ll explain what we know about Freeland’s new role, the questions it’s raised, and the political legacy she leaves behind while Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government teeters on the edge of a majority.Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-mail us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Today is Christyere Freeland's last day in Canadian politics. The former cabinet minister and member of parliament has resigned her seat after over a decade as a liberal. But she still plans to work in government. Just not this one. On Monday, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced Freeland would be joining his team as an economic advisor. The news sparked backlash throughout the week,

as many raised concerns that the appointment created a conflict of interest. Today, the Globe's senior reporter, Stephanie Levitts, joins us from Ottawa. She'll explain what we know about Freeland's new appointment, the questions it's raised, and the political legacy Freeland leaves behind while Prime Minister Mark Carney's government teeters on the edge of a majority. I'm Cheryl Sutherland, and this is the decibel from the Globe and Mail. Hi, Stephanie. Thanks so much for coming back on the show. My pleasure. So, Christy Freeland, who's been serving as Prime Minister Mark Carney's special representative on the Reconstructed,

the reconstruction of Ukraine is now going to be working for the Ukrainian government. When this was announced on Monday, Freeland was still a sitting member of parliament. Steph, how unusual is it for an elected official to accept a role with a foreign government? I can't think of any other parliamentarian who's taken a role like this while sitting as a member of parliament. I'm sure there are folks that will page back through the history books and be like, well, there was this one time. But for Christopher Freeland to do this now is unusual to say the least in the context of advising a foreign government. that she's taken a role advising the Ukrainian government. Not surprising, given Ms. Freeland's very long history of advocacy for the country.

I mean, her mother was fundamental in helping Ukraine write his own constitution. She has been advocating and active in Ukrainian independence for decades. And so that she would sort of segue into this as she eyed an exit from political life. Not surprising. The roll out of it, the way it was handled, the sequence of events, that was a bit surprising. Yeah, yeah, let's get into that. Like, how do we learn about her new appointment advising the Ukrainian government? So we learned about it because Ukrainian president, Vladimir Zelensky, tweeted about it.

He posted on social media early Monday morning that he was appointing her as an advisor with a focus on economic development. It's an announcement, I mean, for sure in Canada, I was like, what? But it's important to just look at a bit of the context there. So Mr. Zelensky is currently rejigging a lot of the folks around him as he seeks to move forward with some kind of negotiated peace with Russia. this announcement came on the heads of the coalition of the willing meeting in Paris. That's all of the global leaders that are also trying to support Ukraine. So for Mr. Zelensky, the timing of saying, hey, look at this new team I'm putting together to try and think about Ukraine post-war. That made sense.

But learning from a tweet from Zelensky, that sounds surprising. It was Mr. Zelensky's announcement to make, right? It's his appointment. So Christopher Philan is not going to scoop him. Prime Minister Mark Carney is not going to scoop him. What was unusual was sort of the length in time. between Mr. Zelensky announcing the appointment and any official response from Ms. Freeland herself about it or from the prime minister about it. And I say that even absent, and I know

we're going to talk about this, some of the controversy that immediately followed that announcement. Usually when you have this sort of thing, it's a carefully choreographed, okay, you go first and you make your statement and then seconds later, Ms. Freeland will make a statement. And then maybe after that comes the one from Mr. Carney and this is all neat, tied into a book. let's remember that Mr. Carney again, he was in Paris for these talks for the Coalition of the Willing. So it was Ukraine Day, you know, in a discussion of parlance, but that's not how it rolled out. And that's what made it curious. Tell me about the delay.

So like you said, it usually happens to this choreograph dance and it takes a few seconds or whatever minutes afterwards. How long of a delay was there between when Zelensky tweeted and then when we heard from Freeland and then we heard from Carney? The better part of a day, really, like a business day here in Ottawa for sure. and the response is, interestingly, I don't know that it was supposed to happen in this fashion, but what happened is you have the announcement and then you have a lot of people looking at it and suddenly, you know, you can almost hear that record scratch sound where it's like, wait a second. What do you mean? She's still a member of parliament.

So what is this about a member of parliament taking on a rule? And I should say when the criticism began, all anybody knew was that she'd been appointed an economic advisor to President Zelensky, knew nothing about the job itself, whatever. So from there, you know, the criticism builds up, right? It's about, is this a conflict of interest? I think it was a conservative MP, Rachel Thomas, who said it really well. It doesn't matter the ally. Like a lot of folks would be like, well, it's Ukraine. And, you know, everyone is, you know, we're really in support of Ukraine. So this is good. And Rachel Thomas is like, well, it doesn't really matter who the ally is. You shouldn't be, you know, basically on the payroll of two governments at the same time. That this doesn't

seem right. And can you break that down? stuff? Like, what is the potential conflict of interest here? So there's the optics of a conflict of interest and then there's the legalities of a conflict of interest, right? So the optics, there's nothing in conflict of interest law or the code that members of parliament have to follow that explicitly says thou shalt not work for a foreign government whilst thou is is a parliamentarian, right? But to work for two governments at the same time, I mean, surface level, that's not okay. That doesn't feel okay. It doesn't seem okay. It seems obvious, but why is that? Why would you not be able to do that. I hesitate a bit because I don't want to get into tropes, right? I don't, I don't want to get

into talking about dual loyalties or who is she really loyal to, because that's risky business. I don't want to question Ms. Freeland's loyalty to the government of Canada, to the people of Canada, nor do I want to question her commitment to Ukraine. But what's the priority? If you're trying to advocate what is best for Canada or what is best for Ukraine, there's a tension point there because what if they're not the same thing? And then which side do you pick? Right. So that, I think, is inherent in the conflict. And that's why these conflict of interest rules exist, right? It's to remove this questionable gray area from MPs and their dealings.

And so, you know, when she accepted the role, she was both a member of parliament, which means she was subject to a conflict of interest code for members of parliament. And because her role at the time with Mr. Carney as a special representative, that was styled as a parliamentary secretary job, which means she's also covered by the Conflict of Interest Act. Both of those things have provisions in them about what public office holders, either members of parliament or other, can and cannot do. And it's about fundamentally making sure they're not abusing their power. And they're not abusing their connections and abusing the access that they have to further their own private interests or the interests of anybody

else. And this is where some folks looked at the Conflict of Interest Act, more so than the Code, and said, well, hold on, furthering the interest of an entity. Well, the government of Ukraine is an entity. So how is she not in violation of the Conflict of Interest Act? Do we know if Freeland has already started or? We don't actually know if she has effectively started the rule. I mean, we do know now that she will no longer be an MP as of January the 9th. And so that's one piece of this.

I don't know, though. I mean, think of it again. Let's remove the players, if you will, government of Canada. government of Ukraine and just take a step back and say, when you are exiting one job and you have accepted the other job, most of the time you have to quit right away. Yeah. Right. Sometimes you've got to give your two weeks notice, you know, but maybe in that time you're not, your boss will say, okay, well, you know, you're going to work out the next two weeks, but you're not going to sit in on these meetings or this deliberation or I'm going to cut you out of this and you're out of the Slack

channel and whatever it is, right? The thing about Ms. Freeland is that she was, offered the job on December 22nd. She told Mr. Carney about it on December 24th. Three days later, Mr. Carney meets with Mr. Zelensky and offers a new round of loan guarantees to Ukraine. I am not, again, I wanted to say this so clearly, I'm not attempting or in any way of any evidence to prove that anybody did anything wrong here. It just doesn't sit right. It doesn't feel right. And I think that that's the thing that Ms. Freeland ran up against. And, you know, a source close to her, has told me that, you know, this wasn't how it was supposed to roll out. She was going to accept the job. And then she was going to resign as an MP. And then Mr.

Zelensky was going to announce it. I mean, maybe. But if that was the case, and that's just what they should have done in the first place, it sounded more like they didn't anticipate the pushback. Because, again, going back to that question of, well, this is Ukraine. And everybody supports Ukraine. And it's no secret that Christopherland has been advocating for Ukraine for decades. What do we know about this rule? We don't know too much about it. The prime minister sort of referenced the fact that it's not dissimilar to the work she was doing for him as the special representative for the reconstruction of Ukraine, which was, you know, a continuation really of her efforts to, to borrow a Mr. Carney phrase, catalyze, a global support for what Ukraine is going to need when the war ends. So reconstruction, I think that means, you know, both tangible reconstruction. I mean, lots in Ukraine has been physically destroyed, right? And then you have building up its institutions. institutions building up, its infrastructure building up, its capacity and capability and economic potential, all of those things. And rather than, you know, advising Mr. Carney on ways that Canadian

government could play a role there, now she's sort of taking that lens and saying to Vladimir Zelensky, okay, here's what I think we could do. And let me try and do this. And I'm going to talk to CEOs and I'm going to this and I'm going to put together, you know, X, Y, and Z. I think it feels like that kind of role. And it's also important to say that. After the day of criticism of her, the people around her made it clear that this was a volunteer job. She's not accepting any money for it. It's also not a full-time rule. It's just something she's doing.

And that's what it'll look like. Does that change anything that it's a voluntary rule? Like, does it change anything around the optics or the pushback from opposition on this idea of conflict of interest? I mean, it removes a layer, right? It removes a layer of saying you're getting paid by a foreign government while you are still being paid by Canadian taxpayers. but I think, you know, at the higher level, again, this idea of serving two masters at the same time. And then potentially, you know, there is this question and I think it lingers of in her capacity in this new rule with Ukraine, is she abiding by the conflict of interest rules that she remains subject to?

Because once you leave political life, you know, no longer an MP or a cabinet minister, there are still conflict of act provisions about improperly using your past office or influence, or influence or all of these things. And one wonders, you know, when she knocks on the door of CEO Company X and says, hi, I'm Christopher Freeland, I'd like to try and talk to you about support for Ukraine. Is she leveraging relationships she only had because she was once the deputy prime minister? Is she, it's very tricky and it's very murky. It's also very hard to police.

I mean, the former ethics commissioner Mario Diol made that point that these are the sorts of things that you kind of know they're out there, but who's going to track that? if the current ethics commissioner would like to, I suppose they could launch an investigation, keep tabs on it. But it's a gray area for sure. This sounds really messy, Steph. What has Freeland said about all of this? Not much.

That she's proud to continue fighting for Ukraine, that she's proud to continue fighting for Canada. She has stressed that this is a voluntary rule. She did say that she's met with the ethics commissioner to discuss it. The nature of those conversations has not been disclosed. she said that she's following the ethics commissioner's advice, whatever that advice is, we don't know. The ethics commissioner won't say they cite privacy concerns in that regard. And, you know, now she's saying that she's going to resign on January 9th. And it's, again, we can go back to now she is saying she's resigning on January the 9th.

She did say in the fall when she stepped down as Mr. Carney's transport and internal trade minister, that she would not be running in the next election. So her exit was not in and of itself. It was coming. everybody knew that. And just that she put a date on it makes it a little bit more final than it had been. So Freeland faced criticism this week after initially saying she would be resigning from Parliament, quote, in the coming weeks. But on Wednesday, she posted to X saying she would instead be resigning effective immediately.

What do you make of this shift? I don't know that this rollout went like it was supposed to go. And I'm not sure that they anticipated the blowback on this conflict of interest potential. and the blowback, you know, sometimes it's easy to dismiss blowback because it's, oh, it's just coming from a handful of people. But, you know, even in our newspaper, the Globe and Mail, I mean, we had a pretty strong editorial saying this just isn't okay. And you need to step down. And perhaps they weren't anticipating that. There's lots of folks, you know, of course, also talking about the reality of the Carney government right now, which is to say it's a minority parliament.

And when you have a vacancy, when an MP steps down, it changes. changes the math. It changes, you know, how many votes now do we need to get things through, makes things a bit more precarious. And there was some discussion and was put to Mr. Carney directly. Did you say to her, please don't leave? Because I have this fragile minority government, I need your vote. And Mr. Carney said, no, he never said that. Mr. Carney, in his answer, in fact, suggested that when Ms. Freeland told him about the position that, you know, his judgment was that it was consistent with her stepping down as an MP, which is to say he was ready for her to be stepping down, taking this role, and that would be the appropriate approach here.

We can take that as it is. I think it still begs the question of why she just didn't, you know, one, two, rip the bandaid off right away. We'll be right back. Steph, let's take a step back and kind of look at Christy Rufferfield's career because she has had quite a storied career as a liberal politician. Can you take us through her time in politics? Where do things start for her? So in 2013, she meets Justin Trudeau. I think it was at a book signing or something. bit of a political meet cute. Bob Ray, let's take a moment for him. Bob Ray was stepping down as the member of parliament for Toronto Center. Bob Ray, of course, was most recently Canada's ambassador to UN. And Freeland decided to sign on and run as a liberal MP. And it's notable because she was one of

Justin Trudeau. Justin Trudeau had just become liberal leader. And Christian was one of his first, quote, unquote, star candidates, like people with really high profile. She'd been a journalist for many years. She was deputy editor of the Globe and Mail briefly. She had a pretty high, profile in certain intellectual foreign policy, foreign relations circles. And I recall that she was considered a big get. It was like, oh, look at the caliber of people that Trudeau is attracting. Again, recall, in 2013, the liberals were, you know, he had just become leader, but the liberals were like in third party status in the house. They were nowhere'sville in politics. And so she was one of his earliest sign-ons. Fast forward. We know where history goes. The liberals pull off a

surprise majority win in 2015. She becomes three. the trade minister. She starts trying to negotiate new trade deals for Canada. Get to 2017. She becomes the Foreign Affairs Minister. There's a new Trump administration in Washington and Christopher Phelan has to renegotiate the Canada, U.S.-Mexico Free Trade Agreement. No small feat there. Trump did not like her very much, but she was seen as pretty strong on that file. She was definitely the public face of being very strong on that file, right? The, you know, it's a phrase we use now, but the elbows up vibe of Canada in 2017, she was. the face of that. And then we get to 2019 and Christopher Freeland becomes deputy prime minister,

Justin Trudeau, which is notable because there hadn't been a deputy prime minister. It's a role that is not required. Nobody has to have one. And so it's often interesting when a prime minister chooses to appoint one. And then eventually she becomes finance minister and pandemic, which is to say she is the finance minister as Canada struggles to figure out how to deal with COVID-19 pandemic, potentially throwing the entirety of our economy off the rails. Yeah. I mean, I remember before pandemic, like, Christy your feeling was seen as a real star of the liberals, right? And I think many people saw her as kind of like the next Trudeau. But then, you know, pandemic happens. And then let's fast forward to December 2020.

She abruptly resigns from Trudeau's cabinet, which ultimately led to his resignation as PM. How does that shift things for her political career? It's interesting because we talk about legacy a lot in politics. What does a politician leave behind when they're gone? What do people remember them for? And it'll, you know, sometimes that takes decades to sort out, right? And if we look at Ms. Freeland from just a policy point of view, I mean, she was in charge of the pandemic benefits package that many people argued did sort of two things simultaneously. One, made sure that our country states solvent, but two, created a deficit of ginormous proportion that will be difficult for any government to get out of. $10 a day childcare. That's transformative. and that was a policy that was in her first budget. So longer-term legacies, folks might look back and say, look at these things she did. But when she clashed with Justin Trudeau in 2024

and basically accused him of not being ready to run a government in the face of a different kind of Trump, right? A much more protectionist Trump, where the global economy wasn't as solid as it had been prior. Almost like she pulled a pin in a grenade. You know, Trudeau, there's a lot of pressure around him to go already. people were very frustrated with him. And she was the thing, the straw that broke the camel's back.

He resigned, you know, two and a half weeks later. I mean, it's notable in its own funny bookend kind of way that Christopher Eland puts out a statement saying she is leaving politics a year and a day after Justin Trudeau quit. Wow. And so what a year in Canadian politics, right? You know, and that, of course, set in motion where we find ourselves now, which is with Prime Minister Mark Carney as liberal leader. So in some ways, and she ran for leadership.

She did try. But once Mark Carney was on the scene, there was very little hope that Christopher was going to break through. He was seen as, you know, she will forever be linked to the Trudeau legacy positively and negatively. And that presented its own political challenge for her and we'll continue to because it's very hard. And I think in Ottawa now, it's still a bit of cognitive dissonance when you hear Trudeau-era cabinet ministers who once upon a time full-throatedly supported the Trudeau liberal agenda.

and now doing like a 180 and coming at things a completely different way and supporting things that they weren't supporting before. And that's weird. And I think that it remains actually a challenge for the Carney Liberals because it's a weak spot. It's this, well, suddenly you say you're in favor of this, but, you know, here's three cabinet ministers and here's all the times they said the opposite. And I think Christa was a very big part of that. And when Kearney won liberal leadership to his credit, he kept her in cabinet.

She was transport and internal trade minister, not an overly public portfolio, didn't do a lot of media. She wasn't out and about that much. So, you know, she exits on a bit of a controversial note, although an exit that will take her, at least before she takes up another new job, which had previously been announced, into an area where I think she can be very proud of all of the work she's done on Ukraine for Canada. and maybe that'll ultimately be her own political legacy. Okay. What does her resignation mean for Carney's government,

like especially as he angles for a majority? I mean, it doesn't mean much. It's a really safe liberal seat. So it's not as though in an eventual by-election there's any risk that the liberals will lose that seat. What will be very interesting is who Mr. Carney ultimately decides ought to replace her. That will be something,

because what it might mean in that way is that he's going to opt to bring somebody on that he immediately puts into cabinet as he keeps trying to refresh and reinvigorate his front benches and try and lead a different kind of government than Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did. In terms of the day-to-day operations of the House of Commons, I mean, it doesn't really change much. The liberals still don't have a majority government. They will still need support from other parties to pass votes. You know, we keep having these conversations. Will they bring over any other floor crossers? Well, maybe while there's a vacancy,

someone's not inclined to cross and be the majority kingmaker, maybe there isn't. I don't. I don't know. But it's, you know, it's yet another break with Trudeau, right? And I think that's good for Mr. Carney ultimately, because he's not just in Trudeau. And politically, he does not really want to hold on to that legacy because it's not a great one in people's minds, right? There is a subset of the population that still really recoils at any mention of Trudeau's name, still does not like the liberals, do not want to vote for Mr. Carney. That's why he didn't get a majority, right? So that still remains an active ghost of politicians past haunting his government. And I think the more he can exercise those demons, the better off he might end up being politically, perhaps.

When Carney was asked about the by-election that would follow Freeland's resignation, he actually mentioned there would be by-elections, plural. Do we know who else may be vacating their seats? Never has so much emphasis been placed on a plural, you know. So it's been long believed that there were some senior liberals, Trudeau era, shall we call them, among them Bill Blair, who held a number of cabinet positions, but was left out of Mr. Carney's cabinet, Jonathan Wilkinson, a former cabinet minister who was also left out of Mr. Carney's cabinet, that those two fellows in particular were going to be given diplomatic appointments. This has yet to formally materialize, but the thinking is that's what Mr. Carney was referring to.

There's also a conservative MP, Matt Jenneroo, who had signaled that he intends to step down at some point this year. A decision he said that came after his name was in the mix as somebody who might cross the floor to the Kearney Liberals. There's also, you know, we get to a point in politics and we're not that far. Obviously, the election was in April. But all sorts of folks will go home over Christmas as they just did and they're coming back to Ottawa and they're thinking about their political futures. And they'll say, you know what, I don't want to do this anymore for whatever reason. And I mean that on the opposition benches as much as I mean that on the government benches. So that wouldn't surprise me either if that's a bit in the mix.

But I guess we'll see. I mean, clock is ticking. The house comes back, you know, towards the end of the month. And Carney's going to be under a lot of pressure to deliver. So he's got to, you know, I think make some decisions about governance sooner rather than later. Steph, just to end here. We talked a little bit about this, but like, let's like really like dive into it. What does this all signal for the Carney government and the liberals, you know, with Christopher,

leaving. Is this the actual end of the Trudeau era in some ways? No, I don't think it's the actual end of Trudeau era. I mean, for one, you know, his finance minister is Francois-Feloup-Felémpane, who is a Trudeau-era minister, vintage Trudeau-era minister. His industry minister is Melanie Jolie. He just brought back Mark Miller into cabinet, who is Justin Trudeau's childhood friend, and Mr. Miller is now the Minister of Heritage. So there are definitely still folks from the Trudeau era hanging around. You know, it is true that Christopher Freeland was linked with Justin Trudeau in a way that is probably distinct than any of those folks that I just mentioned, even though, let's say, Mark Miller is a good personal friend of Justin Trudeau.

So, I mean, for Ms. Freeland, it just needs to be said, this is an end that was already coming. The clock was ticking on how was she going to exit from politics. So this is the end of an arc for a woman who has been in some degree of public life and public service for, you know, her entire career. and she will continue doing that. It is the departure of another strong, prominent woman from Mr. Carney's inner circle and cabinet, which is notable. Is it a full break from the Trudeau years?

No, not yet. I don't think we're there. Steph, as always, it's great to have you on the show. Thank you so much. Thank you. That was Stephanie Levitts, the Globe's senior reporter in Ottawa. That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland.

Our producers are Madeline White, Michal Stein and Ali Graham. Our editor is David Crosby. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening.