OTTAWA — Chrystia Freeland abruptly left Prime Minister Mark Carney’s cabinet on Tuesday to take on a new role as Canada’s special envoy for the reconstruction of Ukraine.
Freeland’s decision to step down from Carney’s front bench prompted a hastily organized mini-cabinet shuffle late in the day at Rideau Hall, where Freeland’s two roles were divided up among other cabinet ministers.
Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc was sworn in as internal trade minister, while government House leader Steven MacKinnon took over the transport portfolio.
Freeland announced her resignation from cabinet on Tuesday following media reports that cited anonymous sources saying she was expected to leave.
She left Tuesday’s regular cabinet meeting smiling and talking with Carney as they walked past TV cameras, but neither stopped to answer questions from reporters about the news.
About an hour after the cabinet meeting, Freeland posted a letter on social media that confirmed she was leaving cabinet and will not seek re-election.
She said she is “not leaving to spend more time with my family or because the burden of elected office is too heavy to bear.” She added she’s leaving politics with “gratitude and a little sadness” as she looks to the next chapter in her life.
“A great strength of democracy is that no one holds political office in perpetuity. After twelve fulfilling years in public life, I know that now is the right time for me to make way for others and to seek fresh changes for myself,” Freeland said in a letter posted to social media.
In a letter he posted online announcing her appointment as envoy, Carney described the former minister of finance and foreign affairs as an intelligent, principled leader with “deep relationships and understanding of Ukraine and its economy.”
“Chrystia is truly uniquely positioned for this timely and essential work towards a better future for Ukrainians and peace in Europe,” Carney said in the letter.
Audrey Champoux, a spokesperson for the Prime Minister’s Office, confirmed the appointment is not a new diplomatic office that comes with staff. She said Freeland will be representing the prime minister and working closely with him on the file.
Freeland has been one of the most prominent government advocates for Ukraine on the world stage.
Bill Browder, an American-born financier and leading advocate for sanctions on Russia, said Freeland was the main proponent of the idea of seizing and forfeiting Russia’s financial holdings in western countries.
He said she raised the idea with fellow finance ministers and pushed back when they expressed doubts about its legality.
“She was the one who came up with the idea of freezing Russia’s central bank reserves,” he told a Tuesday press conference on Parliament Hill about sanctions.
“She had the legal analysis prepared and she was the one who convinced all of the allies that this was the right thing to do. And as a result, $300 billion worth of Russian central bank reserves have been frozen.”
Freeland attended a conference in Kyiv this past weekend about how to end the full-scale war Russia launched in 2014.
She has deep connections to Ukraine and was raised by a Ukrainian-Canadian mother who was born in a refugee camp after the Second World War.
Freeland studied Russian history at Harvard University and Slavonic Studies at the University of Oxford. She was active in the Ukrainian independence movement during her time as an exchange student in Kyiv, leading the Soviet press to denounce her by name.
Freeland worked as a journalist in Kyiv and Moscow for the Financial Times, the Economist and the Washington Post. She speaks both Ukrainian and Russian with ease.
She returned to Canada and worked as an editor for The Globe and Mail in the late 1990s, and eventually for Reuters. She authored books about income disparity and the rise of oligarchs in post-Soviet countries.
The five-time MP was first elected to the House of Commons in 2013, two years before Trudeau took office with a majority in 2015.
During that election, she drummed up media attention by attempting to enter a men-only club where a Conservative cabinet minister was set to speak.
She entered cabinet immediately after the 2015 election, first in trade and then in foreign affairs. There she helped to save an endangered trade deal with the European Union and steered Canada through the renegotiation of the continental trade pact during President Donald Trump’s first term in the White House.
In 2018, Saudi Arabia expelled Canada’s ambassador after Freeland and her department tweeted that the country must release arrested women’s rights activists.
A central figure in Liberal politics for the past decade, she became former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s right hand in late 2019 when he named her deputy prime minister. She became the first woman to be appointed federal finance minister in 2020 and oversaw historic emergency spending during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Her term as minister of intergovernmental affairs involved federal responses to the rise of Alberta separatism, and she managed to form friendships across party lines, particularly with Ontario Premier Doug Ford.
On the day she was set to present a major fiscal update in December 2024, Freeland instead resigned and publicly attacked Trudeau over what she described as expensive political gimmicks.
The move is widely seen as the event that precipitated Trudeau’s resignation on Jan. 6.
Freeland sought the party’s top post in the subsequent leadership race earlier this year, presenting herself as the best person to stand up to Trump.
She lost to Carney in March, who won a resounding mandate. She served for months in Carney’s cabinet, tasked with breaking down internal trade barriers.
Freeland described Carney in her Tuesday letter as a “unifier in a time of crisis” and said she has “absolute confidence in his ability to lead us through it.”
But Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said Tuesday he thinks Freeland decided to leave over the coming fall budget and a worsening fiscal picture.
“She’s probably trying to get out of town and as far away as possible before this disastrous November budget comes, and I don’t blame her,” Poilievre said in the House of Commons foyer.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2025.
Kyle Duggan and Dylan Robertson, The Canadian Press
