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TORONTO — Chrystia Freeland, whose abrupt resignation as finance minister last year forced Justin Trudeau’s exit as prime minister, is leaving the Cabinet of Prime Minister Mark Carney, an official familiar with the matter confirmed Tuesday.
The official confirmed her departure on condition of anonymity, as they were not authorized to speak ahead of the public announcement. The official said Freeland is expected to take a role as an envoy for Ukraine.
Freeland lost the Liberal Party leadership to Carney in March but returned to Cabinet as his transport minister.
She was Trudeau’s most powerful minister, serving as both deputy prime minister and finance minister but her abrupt resignation as finance minister and deputy prime minister last December forced Trudeau to eventually say he was resigning as prime minister and party leader.
Freeland then ran for the party leadership but received just 8% of the vote.
After she resigned as finance minister and deputy prime minister, U.S. President Donald Trump called her “totally toxic” and “not at all conducive to making deals.” Freeland was Canada’s point person when the U.S., Canada and Mexico renegotiated their free trade deal during the first Trump administration.
Freeland, who is of Ukrainian heritage, has also been a staunch supporter of Ukraine in its war against Russia.
The former journalist has been a frequent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who banned her from traveling to the country in 2014 in retaliation for Western sanctions against Moscow.
The 57-year-old Harvard graduate and Rhodes scholar speaks five languages and has influential friends around the world.
Robert Bothwell, a professor of Canadian history and international relations at the University of Toronto, said Freeland was a strength of the Trudeau tenure.
“She supplied some of the gravitas that Trudeau lacked,” Bothwell said, adding that she wasn’t too popular among her fellow Liberal lawmakers given the leadership contest that she lost to Carney.
“She obviously wasn’t too popular, so she seemed to lack a certain amount of common touch,” he said.
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