The protester jumped on the stage, rushed to Chrystia Freeland and shouted a few centimeters from his face.
She didn’t start.
Its launch of January campaign for the leadership of the Liberal Party and by Extension Canada was disrupted, but the meeting made a point that no strain speech could have landed as effectively: it is imperturbable.
Ms. Freeland, a career journalist from Alberta who has become elite institutions to become a high -level politician man, now presents himself to replace the man who brought him to politics, Justin Trudeau.
The Liberal Party of Canada will announce the results of its election on Sunday for a new chief, chosen by 400,000 members. The winner will also become the Prime Minister of Canada, but not for a long time: the party does not order the majority in Parliament, so it has a small grip on power. Federal elections must take place before October.
The dramatic resignation of Ms. Freeland in December as Minister of Finance, Vice-Prime Minister and Complete Right Woman to Mr. Trudeau sparked her own decision to resign, plunging Canada into political disorders.
It came while Canada is pushed into crisis. This week, President Trump explained his threat to impose radical prices on Canadian products and, although he has relaxed some of these measures on Thursday, he made clear, he would continue to strike the economy of Canada with supplements.
Canada has retaliated, entering an unequal trade war with its nearest economic partner. Trump also threatened Canada in a more existential way, insisting that he wants to make the 51st state.
Grain in the mill
Canadians assess their political leaders on the basis of who is the best to fight for Canada against Mr. Trump, shows polls. Ms. Freeland, 56, is the oppressed. She presents herself against a friend, the former central banker Mark Carney, who is the leading journey.
Trump has repeatedly expressed his aversion to Ms. Freeland.
During her first presidency, she led the Canadian part of the renegotiation of the Northern Atlantic Free Trade Agreement. According to all the accounts, she has taken a good deal and won concessions for Canada.
When she announced that she had resigned in December, Trump posted: “Her behavior was completely toxic.”
And last week, in an interview with The British Outlet The Spectator, he doubled: “It’s a blow,” he said. “It is absolutely terrible for the country.”
But Ms. Freeland seems to savor the fight.
“Donald Trump doesn’t like me much,” she said with a smile on one of her announcements. On her Instagram, she published an article from the New York Times on Mr. Trump, adding a disdainful legend: a manicure emoji.
“I have a strategy with regard to the biggest challenge that Canada is confronted with: fighting for Canada, resisting Trump,” she said in an interview with Times at his Toronto home last month.
And despite the antipathy, she praised for him. “I have a lot of respect for President Trump,” she said. “He is not afraid to be a disruptor, he improves it, and he knows how to use it to his advantage, and in many situations, it works,” she added.
Less ardent criticisms see the efforts of Ms. Freeland to differentiate herself from Mr. Trudeau as too little time, and hold her responsible for her central role in her now unpopular government.
Liberal climb
Ms. Freeland had a modest childhood, raised by divorced parents and spending long periods of working on the family farm in Peace River, Alberta, and Edmonton, where her mother, Ukrainian immigrant, worked as a lawyer.
Ms. Freeland left Alberta on a scholarship at 16 to finish high school in an international selective school in Italy. She then studied in Harvard and was a Rhodes Scholar in Oxford.
In Harvard, she spent time in Ukraine as a student in exchange and was involved in the emerging independence movement of Ukraine. His activism would have drawn the attention of the KGB, which called its “Frida”.
Declassified KGB Documents has shown that the Soviet intelligence service hated it and admired it, calling it “a remarkable person”, “ according to to a report in the globe and mail.
She noted in the ranks of some of the most venerable institutions in international journalism, serving as a editor -in -chief of the Financial Times and Reuters, with a brief passage to the Globe and Mail in Canada.
Ms. Freeland is married to Graham Bowley, journalist at the New York Times culture office; They have three children.
Former colleagues and friends describe it as supernaturally active and resolutely unadorned: a large part of the furniture in her house is used. Most of the surfaces in his living room are covered with books and Ukrainian art is hung on the walls. It is known for cycling everywhere, whatever the weather. She gives up security.
Minister of all
In 2013, she moved her New York family to Toronto after Mr. Trudeau convinced her to present himself as a liberal candidate.
He had just been elected leader, and the party was in tatters, stuck in third place. Ms. Freeland is proud to make what she calls “iconoclastic and high risk decisions” and leave journalism to join a party in poor condition was one.
“I called a lot of people, my friends, mentors for life, and everyone’s advice were:” don’t do it, “she said.
Ms. Freeland won her headquarters and, in two years, Mr. Trudeau had brought the party from the dead. During her oath as Prime Minister in 2015, she was by her side.
She has held key jobs, notably the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Finance. The joke in Ottawa was that she was her “minister of everything”. Her incessant energy and her seizure of technical problems distinguished her, but her detractors said that she had appeared to be condescending or stiff in public.
She was strongly criticized for suggesting that people cancel their Disney + subscriptions in response to an accessibility crisis. Despite her own dedication to tax discipline, Ms. Freeland supervised significant expenses.
She remained faithful to Mr. Trudeau, even though the Canadians began to turn against him, and her leading role in her government has become a burden when she tried to separate from her inheritance.
“People know there is a difference between playing in a team and leading a team,” she said, adding that she was proud of the work she had done in the government.
Family drama
The end of his collaboration with Mr. Trudeau remains something of a mystery.
Mr. Trudeau, during a zoom call from December, told Ms. Freeland that he would unmold her to the Envoy des United States-Canada and would give him a post of Minister of Finance to Mr. Carney, who is not elected.
Ms. Freeland and Mr. Trudeau had been in conflict on spending, believing that some of her measures to facilitate the financial charges of Canadians were frivolous and politically motivated. She wanted to save money to deal with Mr. Trump’s prices, which she considered inevitable.
She resigned shortly after the zoom call.
It was the final blow to Mr. Trudeau who, despite his unpopularity, had intended to remain a liberal leader and to bring the party to the next federal elections.
Freeland said that she did not provide that her resignation would lead to that of Mr. Trudeau.
“On the morning of December 16, when I resigned, my hypothesis was that the next day, Mark would become Minister of Finance,” she said in his interview with The Times. “And I think the Prime Minister also thought of it.”
Mr. Trudeau did not comment on the events, and Mr. Carney, who did not accept an interview.
Ms. Freeland’s campaign has reshaped a new image outside the shadow of Mr. Trudeau. She produced political plans and broke out with Mr. Trudeau on a controversial carbon tax he had defended.
And she tried to present herself as the base, not the elite candidate, because most of Mr. Trudeau’s office approved Mr. Carney.
“A failure from the center to the left is that it can be a little too technocratic and to act as if the technocrats have all the answers,” she said.
One of the first decisions she will make if she wins is to decide when to organize a federal election. She is not in a hurry.
“It may well be that when we examine the situation in March and other challenges in April, I will be able to decide as Prime Minister, we can decide as liberals, and frankly, it is perhaps the view of Canadians, that Canada would better have a stable government for a few months,” she said.
As for Mr. Carney who is, among other things, the godfather of her youngest child, she took care not to attack him.
“I have a lot of respect for Mark,” she said. “I would be really happy if he should serve as a Minister of Finance in my government.”
