Chrystia Freeland’s memoir, “Unreliable Boyfriend,” was published by Simon & Schuster on Oct. 13. As quoted by the Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail, it portrays Justin Trudeau as a prime minister who left the details of the 2018 trade negotiations to his ministers and kept even close colleagues at a distance. Freeland was his deputy prime minister and finance minister until her resignation on Dec. 16, 2024.
The book’s most useful passages concern Freeland’s own conduct as much as Trudeau’s. By her own account she stayed inside a government she found disengaged for a year or two longer than she should have, and her resignation letter warned against “costly political gimmicks” without naming them. Having written the book, she should now name the measures that phrase referred to.
What the book says
Freeland led Canada’s side in the 2018 renegotiation of the North American trade agreement with the Trump administration. She writes of Trudeau, “On trade he didn’t dive into the details of our negotiating position or of the negotiations themselves,” as quoted by Andrew Phillips in the Toronto Star. Phillips paraphrases her as saying she met Trudeau one-on-one only a handful of times in nearly a decade in cabinet.
The Globe and Mail quotes a longer passage on the same theme. “His talent for intimacy with strangers co-existed with a profound aloofness from anyone who might come close to being a peer,” Freeland writes, according to the Globe. “We might walk together for the cameras, but none of us, even his personal friends from childhood, had intimate political relationships with him.”
On her account, the minister conducting the country’s most important economic negotiation did so with little direct engagement from the prime minister. That arrangement depended on trust between the two, and the book suggests that trust had gone by late 2024.
How the relationship ended
Freeland’s resignation letter of Dec. 16, 2024 records that Trudeau told her the previous Friday that he no longer wanted her as finance minister and offered her another cabinet post. The Globe reports that she was removed from the finance role on a Zoom call and resigned three days later, on the day she was due to deliver an economic statement in the House of Commons. Trudeau made those decisions while, by Freeland’s letter, the country faced a U.S. threat of 25 per cent tariffs.
The letter called for “keeping our fiscal powder dry” and warned against “costly political gimmicks, which we can ill afford and which make Canadians doubt that we recognize the gravity of the moment.” The book goes further, and the Star quotes her writing that in his final days Trudeau was “focused only on his own political survival” as the U.S. threat grew. That description likely serves her account of why she left, since it places the break on his priorities.
Freeland also describes the atmosphere in the room. “Crying was routine at cabinet meetings,” she writes, as quoted by the Star, and she describes what the Star quotes as a “long, harsh public scolding from Trudeau” of a “very progressive female colleague” who had used the word “crazy.”
Freeland’s own record
As deputy prime minister and finance minister, Freeland was the government’s second-ranking figure, and she sat at the cabinet table where, by her account, crying was routine. The Star quotes her conceding that she left cabinet a year “or maybe two years” too late. The Star also reports that former prime minister Jean Chrétien urged her to resign, telling her she had “a responsibility to the Liberal Party and to Canada.”
A finance minister who believed the prime minister was disengaged from trade and preoccupied with survival had the standing to say so from inside, and her resignation letter is the earliest public record of her doing so that the reporting cites. One reason she stayed may be the convention she now describes from outside, which binds ministers to the government’s line while they serve. A minister owes loyalty in office and candour only afterwards.
Her praise, and the ties behind it
As quoted, the book also credits Trudeau. Freeland writes that “history will be kind to Justin Trudeau,” citing the Canada Child Benefit, the COVID-19 response and the 2018 trade talks, according to both papers. She also writes of Prime Minister Mark Carney, “I am proud my decision helped him get the top job, even though I ended up paying a pretty steep political price,” as the Globe quotes her.
The Globe reports that Carney is godfather to her eldest son and that the families are close, which readers should weigh alongside her judgment that his performance has been “excellent.” Her praise of the 2018 talks as a Trudeau achievement also sits awkwardly beside her description of a leader who did not engage with their details.
At any rate, “Unreliable Boyfriend” will make a lovely read for the politico as we enter cozy season.
