Chrystia Freeland announced Friday she will run to become the next leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.
Freeland, once a staunch ally of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, announced her intentions in a short post on social media.
“I’m running to fight for Canada,” she said in a statement issued “regarding the Liberal Party leadership campaign.”
Her official campaign launch will be Sunday.
Freeland becomes one of the highest-profile candidates in the leadership contest, joining contenders including former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney.
The Liberal Party will decide on its new leader on March 9.
Trudeau’s former deputy prime minister and finance minister, Freeland brings nearly a decade of political experience to the race.
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It was Freeland’s resignation from the Liberal cabinet in late December — on the day she was meant to table the government’s fall economic statement — that precipitated a renewed surge of pressure in the prime minister’s leadership crisis.
She said in a letter to Trudeau that day that the prime minister had asked her to resign a few days earlier after the pair found themselves “at odds” about the direction of the country’s finances.
Freeland lambasted what she called “costly political gimmicks” and stressed the need for Ottawa to keep its “fiscal powder dry” ahead of Donald Trump’s second presidential term in the United States.
Before that blow-up, Freeland had been Trudeau’s finance minister for four years. She served in the prime minister’s cabinet since she was first elected as the member of Parliament for the riding of University—Rosedale in 2015.
After announcing his resignation last Monday, Trudeau called Freeland “an incredible political partner” over the past decade. He said he had hoped she would stay on as the deputy prime minister to tackle “one of the most important files” for Canada, in apparent reference to the trade threats of the looming Trump presidency, “but she chose otherwise.”
In the previous Trump administration, Freeland led the Canadian team in the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, later the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA).
Freeland’s portfolios in the Trudeau government have included handling international trade, foreign affairs and intergovernmental affairs. She has also played a significant role in Canada’s response to Russia’s war in Ukraine; her mother is Ukrainian and Freeland, fully fluent in the language, studied in Kyiv.
Before entering politics, Freeland worked for two decades as a journalist.
Carney, who announced his intentions to enter politics and seek the Liberal leadership on Thursday, was long rumoured in Ottawa as a possible successor for Freeland’s post as finance minister, though that never came to fruition.
In the midst of such speculation, Freeland revealed last year that Carney is the godfather to her son.
