Chrystia Freeland – Canada’s Friend of Democracy Everywhere
One cold January day in 2019, then-Minister of Foreign Affairs for Canada Chrystia Freeland welcomed a young Saudi woman stepping off a plane in Toronto.
Greeting the 18-year-old, whose asylum she’d personally advocated for, as a “brave new Canadian,” Freeland in those moments embodied the spirit of generosity and welcome that her country has become known for. She gave the teen a reassuring hug and jokingly advised her how to handle the frigid Canadian winter. Freeland told reporters she was grateful that the Canadian government had been able to offer a new home to “a person whose life was in danger.”
The group COSTI Immigrant Services had arranged the practical details of the teen’s resettlement in Canada, where she already had friends waiting for her arrival, but it was Freeland’s advocacy that led to the successful conclusion.
As minister of foreign affairs, Freeland had become known for reaching out to survivors of human rights abuses and refugees seeking asylum due to violence in their home countries.
In the months before her welcome in Canada, the Saudi teen endured a series of tense, dangerous situations, communicated to the world through social media posts and videos. At home in Saudi Arabia, she had lived with physical abuse and under threat of being forced into an arranged marriage by her father.
After slipping away during a family vacation in Kuwait, the teen landed in Thailand only to find that her family, along with the Saudi government, were intent on her return. She wrote on Twitter that she feared her family would kill her if she did. The Thai government confiscated her passport.
Images of the young woman barricaded in a small hotel room in Bangkok, with a mattress forming another barrier to the door, went viral. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees formally asked Canada to resettle the teen, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government agreed, saying the country was pleased to do so in the name of human rights.
Freeland’s consistent vocal support for the rights of Saudi women had already caused a series of diplomatic incidents, such as the Saudi government withdrawing its ambassador to Ottawa in August 2018 and expelling the Canadian envoy from Riyadh. In addition, the Saudis ordered their nationals studying in Canada to return home and froze all Canadian investment deals. Neither Trudeau nor Freeland seemed fazed by the repercussions, instead reiterating Canada’s determination to stand up for human rights.
From journalist to policy-maker on the global stage
In 1968 Chrystia Freeland was born in Peace River, in the western Canadian province of Alberta. She earned a degree in Russian history and literature from Harvard University. She also studied at Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship, earning an advanced degree in Slavonic studies.
Originally a well-respected journalist who at one time served as Ukrainian correspondent for the Financial Times, Freeland rose to become managing director of Thomson Reuters before leaving journalism for politics.
In 2013 she was elected a member of the Liberal Party to represent Toronto’s City Centre in Parliament. She won later elections, representing University-Rosedale, in 2015 and 2019. She served from 2015 to 2017 as her country’s minister of international trade, during which time she handled the Canadian side of the roll-out of the newly formed Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, a trade deal between Canada and the European Union.
During her service as minister of foreign affairs from January 2017 to late 2019, Freeland became one of the world’s foremost advocates for the cause of human rights and democracy. In this position, she continued to advocate for multilateral trade agreements and concluded the renegotiations to the North American Free Trade Agreement among Canada, the United States, and Mexico.
In November 2019, Trudeau appointed her deputy prime minister.
On August 18, 2020, Freeland additionally took up the reins of leadership at the Department of Finance, becoming Canada’s first female finance minister. She accepted this challenge in the middle of a pandemic and the widening economic problems that not even a country as well-resourced as Canada has escaped. Her predecessor had resigned only the day before amid an ethics investigation.
Freeland is set to continue to fulfill responsibilities as deputy prime minister while handling the Department of Finance portfolio.
The challenges ahead of her are formidable. She enters into her new duties at a time when Canada is laying out billions of dollars to support individuals, families, and struggling businesses. And Freeland will have to balance these responsibilities alongside Trudeau’s reinvigorated focus on boosting the quality of health care, lowering greenhouse gas emissions, and supporting middle-class priorities as part of a comprehensive response to the novel coronavirus pandemic.
“Enduring defense” of human rights
In 2018 the publication Foreign Policy named Freeland its Diplomat of the Year. Two years later, she earned a Mark Palmer Prize from the nonprofit human rights group Freedom House. The award recognizes diplomatic corps members and civil servants who have gone above and beyond the requirements of their portfolios to serve as examples to the world. The organization noted her “enduring defense of human rights” as a journalist, author, and government minister.
Freedom House noted that Freeland has stood up to vigorously defend democratic values against rising tides of authoritarianism around the world. She has strongly condemned the Chinese government’s violent repression of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. In 2019 Chinese officials repaid this advocacy by accusing her of “meddling” in their country’s internal affairs.
She has also issued strong condemnations of Myanmar’s persecution of its Rohingya Muslim ethnic minority. In 2018 she visited Rohingya refugees living in camps in Bangladesh, arguing for a “comprehensive, international” response to the humanitarian crisis. She concerned herself in particular with strategies for addressing the enormous unmet medical and psychological needs of the almost 1 million Rohingya in the camps, including the many survivors of sexual violence.
Speaking at a Council on Foreign Relations event in 2018, Freeland said, “Canada will always stand up for human rights.” Women’s rights are human rights, she said, and because of the oppressed or threatened status of women in many regions of the world, the country feels a special obligation to come to the aid of women and girls in danger.
In addition, she said, her government feels a particular obligation to assist people abroad who have any kind of personal connection to Canada: “A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian.”