IThere are 39 on the wall: All of Chrystia Freeland’s predecessors as Canada’s Treasury Secretary have framed their pictures and hung them in the lobby of their Ottawa office where visitors await. The weight of history in three symmetrical rows of 13 black and white portraits, a mosaic of politicians whose linearity Chrystia Freeland broke by becoming the first woman to head this key ministry in August 2020.

His appointment in the midst of a crisis (and an astronomical deficit) was a logical progression for the former journalist. Since Justin Trudeau’s election in 2015, she has established herself as the indispensable number two in the Liberal government. The Prime Minister’s confidence in him is immense: in Ottawa there is Chrystia Freeland and the others.

For her, the difficult mandates such as renegotiating the free trade agreement with the United States and Mexico, rebuilding bridges to the western provinces after the 2019 elections or setting the tone for the Canadian response to the Russian attack in Ukraine – the country of his mother-grandparents .

She is on all fronts and has a freedom of speech that we don’t see in other ministers. Last fall, Chrystia Freeland addressed Canadian and American academics and experts from the Brookings Institute, a leading Washington-based think tank, in a speech outlining her vision for a new international order, both economic and geopolitical. She argues that the war in Ukraine marked a turning point in international relations. A new era is dawning, she says, in which the world’s democracies should strengthen their economic and diplomatic ties and build their supply chains on the economies of other democracies – not those of authoritarian regimes. This principle of affinity economy, which “ friend shoring ‘ was defended a few months earlier by his counterpart Janet Yellen, the US Secretary of the Treasury.

Chrystia Freeland’s speech provoked many reactions: Was it really up to her to write some kind of new foreign policy for Canada herself?

That outing didn’t do anything to quell speculation about him — Ottawa’s Parliament Hill is a rumor machine that never rests. Chrystia Freeland would then have the ambition to succeed Justin Trudeau. Or would like to get the post of Secretary General of NATO, which will become vacant in the fall. When we approach them directly, the prime prospect ensures their full attention is focused on their current mandates… without also overtly closing themselves off to those opportunities.

Deputy Prime Minister of Canada received News at his Ottawa office, where a large painting depicting Canada-Ukraine relations evokes both his roots and the raging conflict between Ukraine and Russia. Discussion in French about the future – that of Ukraine, that of international economic relations, that of Canada’s economy… and his own.