Michael Higgins: Freeland’s resignation should be followed by Trudeau’s

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Strong, principled women have always been a problem for our feminist prime minister, but the resignation of Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland should finally put a stake through the heart of this government, which has been on life-support for months.

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How best to now describe Justin Trudeau: the zombie prime minister? The Walking Dead prime minister? If he steps down — and he should — then he’ll join the ghosts of prime ministers past.

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News that Freeland was quitting came as Housing Minister Sean Fraser was holding a press conference to announce that he was leaving cabinet and politics to spend time with his family.

Losing a housing minister was unfortunate for Trudeau, losing two cabinet ministers in one day was not just carelessness but speaks to the shambles the Liberals have become.

But Freeland didn’t just suddenly quit — a bombshell announcement in itself — her resignation letter fired off a number of torpedoes directly at Trudeau.

The threats from president-elect Donald Trump of imposing 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian goods meant keeping “our fiscal powder dry,” she said.

“That means eschewing costly political gimmicks,” she wrote.

Boom! Headline: Ex-finance minister accuses PM of costly political gimmicks.

The Liberals fanfare GST/HST “tax holiday” has been a disastrous policy from day one, a bribe that was ill-conceived, poorly planned and badly executed.

There were also reports Monday that the $250 rebate cheques for working Canadians that were planned for the New Year were being cancelled.

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For Trudeau it was one disaster after another. A grim start to the week by losing Fraser rapidly turned into Black Monday.

But Freeland’s resignation letter had more explosive content.

Pushing back against “America First” economic nationalism meant “working in good faith and humility with the Premiers of the provinces and territories,” she wrote. “I know Canadians would recognize and respect such an approach.”

Clearly, Freeland doesn’t believe that Trudeau has adopted that necessary stance and is not working in “good faith and humility” with the premiers at this dangerous economic time.

Boom! Headline: Freeland accuses Trudeau of not working in good faith with premiers

And there was more.

Canadians know when Liberals were working for them “and they equally know when we are focused on ourselves.”

Boom! Selfish Liberals are just playing politics, says Freeland.

Freeland’s letter is a withering attack on the prime minister’s principles, it is an astonishing indictment of Liberal economic policy, it is a testament to the confusion and disarray within the government, and it should be the prime minister’s undoing.

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The whole effort of trying to oust Freeland by Trudeau speaks volumes to his disastrous timing.

Freeland’s letter revealed that on Friday Trudeau told her that he no longer wanted her as finance minister and offered her another position in cabinet.

Two days before a major economic statement the prime minister asks the finance minister to step down? In what credible, fully functioning government would that ever be a scenario?

And are we to assume that her replacement would be Mark Carney, the former Bank of Canada governor, who has been so assiduously courted by Trudeau?

If Carney has any political sense, he will distance himself very, very far from a prime minister who has been effectively denounced by his own former ministers as unprincipled, unconscionable and capricious.

Only days ago — days! — Trudeau was lecturing the Americans because of the apparent appalling way they had treated a woman, Kamala Harris.

“Just a few weeks ago, the United States voted for a second time to not elect its first woman president,” he said at the Equal Voice Gala Marking International Human Rights Day. “Everywhere, women’s rights and women’s progress is under attack. Overtly, and subtly. But I want you to know that I am, and always will be, a proud feminist. You will always have an ally in me and in my government.”

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Feminist prime ministers don’t stab female finance ministers in the back.

But we should not be surprised at any of this. This behaviour from the prime minister was telegraphed by Jody Wilson-Raybould when she was ousted as attorney general and justice minister for standing up to Trudeau when he tried to infer with her portfolio.

When she rightly pushed back she found herself sidelined.

So toxic did she believe Trudeau that she told him, “I wish that I had never met you,’” she later wrote in her book, Indian in the Cabinet.

She also said that when her replacement, David Lametti, was sworn in, she told him, “Be careful, all is not what it seems.”

Lametti, of course, would be shuffled out of the post several years later, a change he described as a “difficult fall.”

Wilson-Raybould was right.

Freeland said she had to resign because she had lost the confidence of the prime minister. But Trudeau has lost the confidence of the country and should follow Freeland’s example.

National Post

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