Chrystia Freeland is preparing for a federal budget on March 28, but she might also be preparing for a new job..Hamish Telford, political science professor at the University of the Fraser Valley, says Freeland might replace Trudeau whenever he decides to pack it in..“If Trudeau was brought down, she would, at this point, I still think, be a leading contender,” Telford said in an interview with the Western Standard..“There's not a long history of finance ministers going on to the top job. Of course, John Turner eventually got the leadership of the Liberal Party and prime ministership, but didn't hold on to it for very long. Paul Martin did not succeed for very long as prime minister after a long stint as finance minister.”.Turner was finance minister in the early 1970s, then made a political comeback to replace Pierre Trudeau as Liberal leader and prime minister in 1984. He called a snap election and lost to the Progressive Conservatives led by Brian Mulroney..Turner was succeeded by Jean Chretien who became prime minister in 1993. His finance minister for a decade, Paul Martin, inherited a majority government when he became Liberal leader in 2003. He was reduced to a minority by the new Conservative Party of Canada in 2004, and handed the prime ministership to Stephen Harper after the 2006 election..“With the prime minister giving all the indications he's sticking around and intends to fight the next election, senior ministers like her often wonder if the time is passing them in terms of assuming that position, and maybe they should be looking to further their career elsewhere,” Telford said..Last September a substack post by journalist Paul Wells suggested one of Freeland’s options could be the top job at NATO..“The Liberals I spoke to are skeptical that Chrystia Freeland would run to replace Trudeau. ‘I just don’t see her sitting through a bunch of debates with other Liberals,’ one of my Trudeau confidants said of Freeland, ‘or meeting delegates’ in a succession of small towns,” Wells wrote..“And an exit route, plausible but far from sure, presents itself: she is being mentioned as a serious candidate to become NATO’s next secretary general.”.Freeland was asked at a Vancouver press conference last September if she was considering the job, but sidestepped the question..“So, I have a really big job already. In fact, I have two big jobs as finance minister and deputy prime minister of Canada,” she explained..“And I am really, really focused on those.”.Telford thinks Freeland is “credible” but a “long shot” for the job..“The leading speculation is her name is in the running to be secretary general of NATO. And given her credentials on the Ukraine and anti-Russian credentials, she might be a strong candidate for that, although it would be unusual for a Canadian to be selected for it for a variety of reasons, not least of which our rather weak military,” Telford said..“She speaks Ukrainian, she speaks Russian. And I think that her knowledge of Eastern Europe would certainly be considerable compared to other potential candidates. And, being secretary general of NATO is a political job rather than a military job.”.Freeland was born in Peace River, AB and educated at Harvard University before studying at Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship. She wrote her first book in 2000, “The Inside Story of the Second Russian Revolution,” followed by her award-winning 2012 book, “Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else.” She sits on the Board of Trustees for the World Economic Forum..Freeland was a Ukraine-based freelance correspondent for the Financial Times, The Washington Post, and The Economist, then worked for the Financial Times of London. She was deputy editor of the Globe and Mail from 1999 to 2001, before returning to the Financial Times as deputy editor and then as U.S. managing editor. In 2010, she joined Canadian-owned Thomson Reuters and served as a managing director and editor of consumer news..Freeland’s political career began with a by-election win in Toronto Centre in 2013. She served as minister of International Trade, then minister of Foreign Affairs before becoming deputy prime minister and minister of Intergovernmental Affairs in 2019. She was appointed Finance minister in 2020.
