Christina Alexandra Freeland (born August 2, 1968) is a Canadian politician and journalist who served as the tenth deputy prime minister of Canada from 2019 to 2024. A member of the Liberal Party, she was first elected as the member of Parliament (MP) for Toronto Centre in 2013 and represented University—Rosedale from 2015 to 2026. Freeland served as a Cabinet minister from 2015 to 2025 during the premierships of Justin Trudeau and Mark Carney.
After the 2015 federal election, Freeland was appointed by Prime Minister Trudeau to serve as the minister of international trade and became the minister of foreign affairs in 2017, as Canada negotiated the Canada–United States–Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) and finalized the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). In 2019, she became deputy prime minister and minister of intergovernmental affairs, serving in the latter role until 2020, when she became minister of finance. As finance minister, Freeland introduced four federal budgets, including federal aid measures during the COVID-19 pandemic, and was the first woman to serve in the role.
In December 2024, Freeland resigned from Cabinet on the day she was scheduled to present the government’s fall economic statement, triggering a political crisis that ultimately led to the resignation of Trudeau. Freeland ran in the subsequent 2025 Liberal leadership election, placing a distant second to Carney. In March 2025, Freeland returned to Cabinet after Carney appointed her minister of transport and internal trade, positions she held until resigning in September 2025. That same month, she was appointed special representative for the reconstruction of Ukraine.
On January 5, 2026, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced Freeland's appointment as an unpaid economic adviser to his government. Later that week, Freeland announced her intention to resign as special representative and from Parliament. Her resignations took effect on January 9. In July 2026, Freeland became the warden of Rhodes House and chief executive officer of the Rhodes Trust.
Early life and education (1968–1993) Christina Alexandra Freeland was born in Peace River, Alberta on August 2, 1968. Her father, Donald Freeland, was a farmer, lawyer, and a member of the Liberal Party. Her paternal grandmother was a Scottish war bride. Her Ukrainian mother, Halyna Chomiak (1946–2007), was also a lawyer, and ran for the New Democratic Party (NDP) in Edmonton Strathcona in the 1988 federal election. Her maternal grandfather was Nazi collaborator Michael Chomiak. Freeland's parents divorced when she was nine years old, though she continued to live with both of them.
Freeland was an activist from a young age, organizing a strike in grade five to protest her school's exclusive enrichment classes. She attended Old Scona Academic High School in Edmonton, Alberta for two years before attending the United World College of the Adriatic, in Italy, on a merit scholarship from the Alberta government for a project that sought to promote international peace and understanding.
Freeland studied Russian history and literature at Harvard University. During 1988–89, she was an exchange student at the Taras Shevchenko State University of Kyiv in Soviet Ukraine, where she studied Ukrainian, in which she is fluent. While there, she worked with journalist Bill Keller of The New York Times to document the Bykivnia graves, an unmarked mass grave site where the NKVD (the Soviet secret police) disposed of tens of thousands of dissidents. The official Soviet story held that the graves were the result of Nazi atrocities. She translated the stories of locals who had witnessed covered trucks and "puddles of blood in the road" that predated the Nazi invasion, adding evidence that the site was actually the result of Stalinist repression and purges.
While there, she attracted the attention of the KGB, which tagged her with the code name "Frida". Soviet newspapers attacked her as a foreigner meddling in their internal affairs over her contacts with Ukrainian activists. The KGB put Freeland under surveillance and tapped her phone calls. They documented the young Canadian activist delivering money, video and audio recording equipment, and a personal computer to contacts in Ukraine. She used the Embassy of Canada in Moscow to send material abroad in secret diplomatic pouches, worked with foreign journalists on stories about life in the Soviet Union, and organized marches and rallies to attract attention and support from Western countries. On her return from a trip to London in March 1989, Freeland was denied re-entry to the Soviet Union. By the time her activism within Ukraine came to an end, Freeland had become the subject of a high-level case study from the KGB on how much damage a single determined individual could inflict on the Soviet Union; a 2021 Globe and Mail article quoted the report by a former officer of the KGB, which had described Freeland as "a remarkable individual", "erudite, sociable, persistent, and inventive in achieving her goals".
Freeland worked as an intern for United Press International in London in the summer of 1990. Afterwards, she completed a Master of Studies degree in Slavonic studies from the University of Oxford in 1993 having studied at St Antony's College as a Rhodes Scholar.
Journalism career (1993–2013) Freeland worked as a journalist in Ukraine and eventually held editorial positions at the Financial Times, The Globe and Mail, and Reuters. She also authored Sale of the Century: Russia's Wild Ride from Communism to Capitalism (2000) and Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else (2012).
Freeland began her career in journalism as a stringer for the Financial Times, The Washington Post, and The Economist while working in Ukraine. Freeland later worked for the Financial Times in London as a deputy editor, and then as an editor for its weekend edition, FT.com, and UK news. Freeland also served as Moscow bureau chief and Eastern Europe correspondent for the Financial Times.
From 1999 to 2001, Freeland served as the deputy editor of The Globe and Mail. She next worked as the managing director and editor of consumer news at Thomson Reuters. She was also a weekly columnist for The Globe and Mail. Previously, she was editor of Thomson Reuters Digital, a position she held since April 2011. Prior to that she was the global editor-at-large of Reuters news since March 1, 2010, having formerly been the United States managing editor at the Financial Times, based in New York City.
Published works
Freeland is the author of Sale of the Century: Russia's Wild Ride from Communism to Capitalism (2000), as well as Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else (2012). Sale of the Century is an account of privatization in Russia. It is based on interviews between Freeland and leading Russian businessmen, conducted from 1994 to 1998 when she lived in Russia as the Moscow bureau chief for the Financial Times. The book chronicles the challenges that the "young reformers" championing capitalism such as Anatoly Chubais and Yegor Gaidar had in wresting control of Russian industry out of the hands of the communist "red barons". The compromises they made, such as the loans for shares scheme, allowed businessmen such as Mikhail Fridman, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and Vladimir Potanin to seize control of the economy and install themselves as Russian oligarchs. Plutocrats was a New York Times bestseller, and the winner of the 2013 Lionel Gelber Prize for non-fiction reporting on foreign affairs. It also won the 2013 National Business Book Award for the most outstanding Canadian business-related book.
Political career (2013–2026) On July 26, 2013, Freeland left journalism to enter politics. She sought the nomination for the Liberal Party in Toronto Centre to replace Bob Rae, who was stepping down to become chief negotiator and counsel for the Matawa First Nations in Northern Ontario's Ring of Fire. She won the nomination on September 15, and faced NDP candidate Linda McQuaig in the November 25 by-election. During the campaign, she received criticism for purchasing a $1.3 million home, although the price was consistent with Toronto's home prices. Freeland won 49 percent of the vote and was elected. In 2013, Freeland received campaign contributions from Paul M. Grod, former president of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) and current president of the Ukrainian World Congress (UWG), and Ukrainian-Canadian businessman James C. Temerty.
During the demonstrations leading up to the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity, Freeland wrote an op-ed for The Globe and Mail, in which she excoriated the government of Viktor Yanukovych. She supported seizing personal assets and banning travel as part of economic sanction programs against Yanukovych and members of his government. That March, during the annexation of Crimea by Russia, Freeland visited Ukraine on behalf of the Liberal Party. She met community leaders and members of the government in Kyiv, including Mustafa Dzhemilev, leader of the Crimean Tatars; Vitali Klitschko, leader of the Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform; and Ukrainian MP Petro Poroshenko, who was later elected president of Ukraine in May 2014. Since 2009, Freeland has been a regular attendee of the Yalta European Strategy annual meetings founded and sponsored by Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk.
Freeland was one of thirteen Canadians banned from travelling to Russia under retaliatory sanctions imposed by Russian president Vladimir Putin in March 2014. She replied through her official Twitter feed, "Love Russ lang/culture, loved my yrs in Moscow; but it's an honour to be on Putin's sanction list, esp in company of friends Cotler & Grod." In the riding redistribution of 2012 and 2013, much of Freeland's base was shifted from Toronto Centre to the new riding of University—Rosedale, where she ran in the 2015 federal election. She defeated NDP challenger Jennifer Hollett with 50 percent of the vote.
Minister of International Trade (2015–2017)
On November 4, 2015, newly elected prime minister Justin Trudeau chose Freeland as minister of international trade in his first Cabinet. She was involved in negotiations leading up to the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between Canada and the European Union, former prime minister Stephen Harper's legacy project. The trade deal, signed October 30, 2016, was Canada's largest since NAFTA.
Minister of Foreign Affairs (2017–2019)
In a Cabinet shuffle on January 10, 2017, Freeland was appointed minister of foreign affairs, replacing Stéphane Dion as the head of Trudeau's foreign policy. With National Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan, Freeland announced Canada's military training mission in Ukraine would be extended until March 2019, maintaining the 200 soldiers previously mandated by the Harper government.
That August, she instructed her department and officials to "energetically" review reports of Canadian-made Terradyne military vehicles being used against civilians in Shia-populated city of Al-Awamiyah by Saudi Arabian security forces. The government briefly suspended Terradyne's export permits to Saudi Arabia before reinstating them; a Canadian investigation stated that it "found no conclusive evidence that Canadian-made vehicles were used in human rights violations". This conclusion was challenged by human rights groups such as Project Ploughshares for not considering the risk of human rights abuses. Freeland sponsored Bill C-47, which allowed Canada to join the Arms Trade Treaty in 2019.