{"id":937678,"date":"2026-10-18T13:52:35","date_gmt":"2026-10-18T13:52:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/937678\/"},"modified":"2026-10-18T13:52:35","modified_gmt":"2026-10-18T13:52:35","slug":"freeland-believes-her-resignation-led-to-better-outcome-for-trudeau-allowing-him-to-exit-before-likely-defeat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/937678\/","title":{"rendered":"Freeland believes her resignation led to better outcome for Trudeau, allowing him to exit before likely defeat"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Text<\/p>\n

Listen to this article<\/p>\n

Estimated 3 minutes<\/p>\n

The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results.<\/p>\n

Former finance minister and deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland believes her resignation \u2014 which spurred Justin Trudeau to step down \u2014 was ultimately a good outcome for the former prime minister given his plummeting popularity.<\/p>\n

While her book, Unreliable Boyfriend, is meant to be a guide for dealing with U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration, it also outlines how her political relationship with Trudeau declined in the final months of his government.<\/p>\n

Freeland writes that the prime minister informed her in a Zoom call that he would be replacing her as finance minister just days before she was set to deliver the government’s fall economic statement in late 2024. <\/p>\n

She abruptly stepped down the same day the statement was to be tabled in Parliament. Trudeau resigned a few weeks later.<\/p>\n

Her book outlines how a conversation with former Liberal prime minister Jean Chr\u00e9tien a month earlier helped her make the ultimate decision to leave.<\/p>\n

Speaking to CBC’s The Sunday Magazine, Freeland detailed another conversation she had with Chr\u00e9tien in the wake of the blow-up.<\/p>\n

“Prime minister Chr\u00e9tien said \u2026 in resigning, it was ultimately a better outcome for Canada, for the Liberal Party \u2014 and also ultimately for prime minister Trudeau because it allowed him not to lead our party to defeat,” Freeland told host Piya Chattopadhyay.<\/p>\n

“I think that is a very wise observation.”<\/p>\n

The Conservatives held a huge lead in the polls over Trudeau’s Liberals during the final year of his tenure. Mark Carney won the Liberal leadership race to replace Trudeau and led the party to another election win in 2025.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland rises to present the federal budget in the House of Commons in Ottawa as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, lower right, listens on April 16, 2024. (Adrian Wyld\/The Canadian Press)<\/p>\n

Freeland defends record as finance minister<\/p>\n

Freeland had been a cabinet minister in Trudeau’s government since it was first elected in 2015 and served as finance minister from the summer of 2020 until her resignation.<\/p>\n

When asked if she felt she bore any responsibility for the fading popularity of the Trudeau government \u2014 given that the Conservative surge was driven by their focus on the economy and cost of living \u2014 she touted her record as finance minister.<\/p>\n

LISTEN | Chrystia Freeland on The Sunday Magazine:<\/p>\n

The Sunday Magazine43:02Chrystia Freeland talks Trump, Canada-U.S. trade war and political tenure with Trudeau<\/p>\n

As a former cabinet minister, Chrystia Freeland was a central figure in Canada’s negotiations with United States President Donald Trump. Now, while Prime Minister Mark Carney sees a rupture in the U.S.-led world order, Freeland isn’t giving up on the possibility of a unified Western alliance to keep adversaries at bay. She makes her case for rebuilding it \u2013 with America included, and Canada playing a different role \u2013 in her new book Unreliable Boyfriend. Piya Chattopadhyay speaks with Freeland about her vision, her time in government with former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and her take on Carney’s tack during the current trade war.<\/p>\n

“I am very glad that as finance minister, I got us through COVID and I preserved our AAA credit rating while doing that,” she said.<\/p>\n

“We were able to return to a sustainable fiscal path. Now, that was politically hard to do, but it was absolutely the right thing to do.”<\/p>\n

Despite their political fallout, Freeland spoke kindly of her early political relationship with Trudeau. And, as she notes in her book, she argued that history will look kindly on Trudeau \u2014 but added that she wished he had stepped down earlier.<\/p>\n

WATCH | Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland over the years:\"\"<\/p>\n

Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland over the years<\/p>\n

Canada’s recently resigned finance minister was an integral part of the prime minister’s government \u2014 until she wasn’t.<\/p>\n

She insisted multiple times in the interview that Unreliable Boyfriend is “not a book about Justin Trudeau.” But she didn’t directly answer if she had reached out to her former boss during the writing process.<\/p>\n

“I chose what I wrote really carefully. It was important for me to be authentic and to be open. But this really is a book about me and a book about my ideas and my view of where we should go,” she said.<\/p>\n

“It’s not a salacious story.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 3 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":937679,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,48,44],"class_list":["post-937678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=937678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937678\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/937679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=937678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=937678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=937678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}