Canada finance minister quits after clash with Trudeau over Trump tariffs, spending
OTTAWA — Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland quit on Monday after clashing with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on issues including how to handle possible U.S. tariffs, dealing an unexpected blow to an already unpopular government.
Freeland said she was quitting in the wake of a meeting last Friday with Trudeau, who asked her to take on a lesser post after the two had been arguing for weeks over spending.
Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc — a member of Trudeau’s inner circle — was quickly named finance minister of the minority Liberal government.
The resignation of Freeland, 56, who also served as deputy prime minister, is one of the biggest crises Trudeau has faced since taking power in November 2015. It also leaves him without a key ally when he is on track to lose the next election to the official opposition Conservatives.
A Liberal source said Trudeau wanted Freeland to serve as minister without portfolio dealing with Canada-U.S. relations in name only — in effect a major demotion.
Trudeau met the national Liberal caucus later on Monday – including Freeland – but legislators declined to say afterwards what had happened.
Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon said there had been a good and frank conversation but gave no details.
The potential threat was underlined when a top member of the opposition New Democrats, who have been helping keep the Liberals in power, said the party would vote to bring down Trudeau next year unless he quit.
“If we’re coming up to a straight up non-confidence motion at the end of February, early March, that’s one of the tools that we have,” House of Commons leader for the NDP Peter Julian told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.
“We simply cannot continue like this,” he said, adding he expected Trudeau to have resigned by then.
Freeland quit just hours before she was due to present a fall economic update to parliament. The document showed the minority Liberal government had run up a 2023/24 budget deficit of C$61.9 billion, much higher than predicted.
Trudeau can be toppled if the opposition parties unite against him on a vote of no confidence, though that cannot happen until next year.
