Los Angeles Times - 06.04.2020

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Ma Yansong:In the April 5 Calendar section, an article about Lucas Museum of Narrative Art lead architect Ma Yansong attributed published criticisms about the museum to Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin. The comments should have been attributed to Tribune culture writer Steve Johnson.

FOR THE

RECORD

ment public appearances.
“She is the star of the
moment,” said Donald J.
Savoie, an expert on public
administration at the Uni-
versity of Moncton in New
Brunswick.
She is also the most
prominent and consequen-
tial woman in Canada.
Described by Maclean’s
magazine as “the minister of
everything,” Freeland has
the two toughest portfolios
in Canadian politics and
may be in line to be the
country’s next leader even if
Trudeau, who is in self-
imposed isolation after his
wife contracted the virus,
stays healthy.
The tendrils of power
linking Trudeau and Free-
land are increasingly promi-
nent. Since the autumn she
has been operating out of
the same building across
from Parliament Hill as
Trudeau. Once Trudeau
completed his remarks
virtually closing the
borders,he turned to Free-
land to roll out a series of
dramatic policy changes.
She approached all this
with what might be called
Chrystia cool and with an
inclination for understate-
ment.
“I wouldn’t call it fran-
tic,” she said in an interview
recently as the House of
Commons paused from
debating an emergency
financial package to ad-
dress the crisis. “It is very
busy.”
Very busy indeed. As she
took over a new coronavirus
Cabinet committee, she
called for a “whole of coun-
try” approach to the threat,
seeking to mobilize busi-
ness, labor and civic organi-
zations. She won the swift
support of business leaders,
who sometimes say the
Liberals do not engage
enough with the commer-
cial sector.
If it can be said that
Freeland, 51, has arrived, it
is in part because of her
arrival back in Canada after
a Rhodes scholarship and
years as a foreign corre-
spondent and editor in Kyiv,
London, New York and
elsewhere.
The author of influential
books about Russia and
global wealth disparities,
she entered politics during
the Conservative Party
reign of Prime Minister
Stephen Harper, winning a
House of Commons seat in
Toronto in 2013 and moving
swiftly to prominence, be-
coming Trudeau’s minister
of international trade two
years later and, 14 months
after that, taking over as
foreign minister.
“Even people who had
not read her books,” said
Rohinton P. Medhora, presi-
dent of the nonpartisan
Center for International
Governance Innovation,
“could look to her and say:
‘If we get a government with
her in it, there will be a

change from the Harper years.’ ”

b

Chrystia Freeland was born in the remote settle- ment of Peace River in northwestern Alberta to parents who were lawyers in a community that then had a population of just under 5,400 and was five hours by car from Edmonton. Some relatives were Ukrainians who had spent time in a displaced-persons camp in war-ravaged Europe, some had homesteaded in the

Canadian outback and pursued classic Canadian diversions that included riding in the Calgary Stam- pede. Years later, she would sing to her three children in Ukrainian; she’s married to New York Times cultural arts writer Graham Bowley, who commutes to their Toronto home even as she commutes to her Ottawa battle station. It’s a frantic life but, according to Daphne Taras, dean of the Ted Rogers School of Management at Toronto’s Ryerson Uni- versity, “she’s a combination of very intense and very laid back.” “It seems contradictory,” Taras continued, “but there she is, biking around town but looking crisp and great.” But it was her Western ties rather than her metro persona that led Trudeau to task her with addressing discontent in two provinces that have long felt ignored by the federal government. “The appointment re- flected the main concerns of the government,” said Eric Marquis, Quebec’s assistant deputy minister for bilateral relations. “She’s one of the firefighters in Ottawa, putting out the flames. She’s the only one in the government who has the credibility to do that.” For a native Albertan to address Western alienation is a challenge, said Michael Hawes, executive director of Fulbright Canada, “but she is a successful and purpose- ful politician, she has entered into negotiations that were difficult, she doesn’t suffer fools easily and she clearly has the ear of the prime minister.”

Having the ear of Trudeau is especially important now that so many voices are demanding attention. But Freeland’s prominence is a result of the tone and timbre of her voice — forceful but not frantic, intelligent but not incendi- ary. And it comes from loyalty. Hers was an important female voice of support during the complex domes- tic SNF-Lavalin imbroglio, when Freeland sided with the embattled Trudeau after charges of improper prime-ministerial meddling in a justice issue that came from accusations by anoth- er prominent Cabinet mem- ber, Atty. Gen. Jody Wilson- Raybould. In a classic act of finesse, Freeland noted Trudeau’s “feminist” record but acknowledged that Wilson-Raybould spoke “her truth.” Indeed, diplomatic skills marked her period as Cana- da’s chief trade official and, then, its chief face in global affairs and at global con- claves. They also helped nudge the U.S. and Canada together in the move from NAFTA to USMCA, the new trade accord. “Being told we had to renegotiate NAFTA was an existential crisis for us,” said Jennifer Welsh, who holds a chair in global governance and security at McGill Uni- versity. “It required her to access a long list of constitu- encies — senators, House members, mayors — and she managed that well.” It also displayed Free- land’s nationalist side. When she left Reuters in 2013, she told Time magazine that she “felt myself to be very Canadian.” That was a slightly surprising remark from someone who had cultivated an image as a citizen of the world. But as the coronavirus surged through North America, Freeland’s sense of being Canadian surged as well. “As a politician, and particularly a political leader in difficult periods — NAFTA, now coronavirus — I have come to feel a pro- found connection with the Canadians I serve, and a very deep responsibility to Canadians,” she said. “As a journalist, you feel a respon-

sibility to your readers, but now there is a responsibility for me to be 1,000% emotion- ally invested.” That nationalism became apparent in her will- ingness to take on the U.S. and its president, who imposed tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum. After the Trump administration said the tariffs were prompted by “national security” concerns, she responded by addressing the American people: “I think what is important for Americans to understand is the justifica- tion under your rules for the imposition of these tariffs was a national-security consideration. So, what you’re saying to us and to all your NATO allies is that we somehow represent a national security threat to the United States.” Then she added, mor- dantly: “And I would just say to all of Canada’s American friends ... Seriously?” In the end, she won some of the market access that Canada wanted, though the agreement might have come at the expense of innovation sectors, particularly intel- lectual property and data management. Overall, her record has not been unblemished. Critics said she paid too little attention to China and India. And as Canada re- news its perhaps-doomed efforts to win one of the rotating seats on the United Nations Security Council, some critics believe she did not engage in enough schmoozing with African leaders — a critical U.N. voting group. She’s also won the en- mity of Russian President Vladimir Putin and top Chinese officials. After she criticized government sup- pression of protests in Hong Kong — where 300,000 Ca- nadian citizens reside — China cited her for making “irresponsible remarks on Hong Kong affairs repeat- edly, and grossly [interfer- ing] in China’s internal affairs.” “In an era when many politicians in democracies are accommodating auto- crats and dictators, she is someone who stands up to them, sometimes to the detriment of her country,” said Michael J. Abramowitz, president of the Washing- ton-based Freedom House, a democracy watchdog group. “She’s done it for Ro- hingya Muslims in Myan- mar, on Hong Kong with China, and the rights of women activists who have been jailed in Saudi Arabia. Freedom and democracy are the core issues for her.” Freeland drew inspira- tion from Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent (in office 1948 to 1957), who believed Canadian foreign policy should be governed by what he called “the rule of law in national and international affairs.” She won credit globally for speaking out in favor of the liberal international order — perhaps the only prominent North American official to do so — and she was not shy about the importance of using mili- tary force. “Of course it must be a

last resort,” she told the broadcaster CBC last year. “But I really believe in this moment today — when ... there are many threats to the liberal international order — it is precisely the democracies, it is precisely the countries that stand for values and human rights that also need to be ready to say we are prepared to use hard power when neces- sary.”

b

When Freeland, who had worked at the Financial Times, Reuters and the Globe and Mail, left journalism for politics, she took with her some of the tools of news gathering — the ability to assess situations swiftly, the instinct to distrust convention, the reliance on a searching examination before making a conclusion. “I have always been a big believer in primary sources,” she said. “But at the same time, for decades I always tried to reach out to talk to independent experts with specific knowledge. I have been talking to doctors and to professors and also to business leaders and to union leaders.” She also brought to her new role familiarity with the global movers and shakers, many of whom she profiled or knew from her days walking the corridors of power in Europe and North America. But for her, journalism provided both entree and limits. She prospered from the former and bumped up against the latter, and not a few in journalism believe she migrated into politics because she topped out of journalism at the relatively young age of 45. And yet she was marked deeply by journalism. In a public discussion with U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet last year, she at- tacked the notion that journalists were, as Presi- dent Trump has frequently said, the “enemy of the people.” But she admitted, “That doesn’t mean I re- spond with joy in my heart to every single question I’m asked.” Two years ago, during a meeting with Trudeau, she turned to him and said, “Prime minister, that is a scoop. No one knows that.” Trudeau looked bewildered, finally reminding Freeland that her journalism days were over. “Some of the instincts do die hard,” she told the CBC. Like this one: “Journalists are accus- tomed to working on dead- line with incomplete information, and I think you cannot be a successful breaking-news journalist — covering collapse of the Soviet Union, for example — without understanding that sometimes you must choose speed over perfection,” she said. “That is the motto of every news desk in the world, and it is certainly something I have been saying to the members of our coronavirus Cabinet committee — that we need to act with agility and alacrity.” Jeremy Kinsman, then Canada’s ambassador to Russia, met Freeland in Moscow when she was a young journalist. Later he reconnected with her in Kyiv while her mother was helping Ukrainians draft their initial constitution. But it was clear to Kins- man, if not to others, that she eventually wanted to return to Canada, which is not always congenial to the return of the prodigal. She, however, avoided the chilly homecoming journalist author Michael Ignatieff received when he returned from Harvard. He eventually became the Liberal leader and presided over the party’s 2011 federal election debacle, losing his own seat in the process. “It didn’t happen with her,” Kinsman said. “The reason is personality and cleverness and the fact that she is a terrific communica- tor. She has come home and been very successful because people have seen her operations abroad as a star. “She’s not bringing Can- ada some kind of glory she won abroad. She was the only one with the chops and chutzpah to deal with di- plomacy in the age of Trump.”

Shribman is a special correspondent.

She leads Canada’s coronavirus battle

DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER Chrystia Freeland is “the star of the moment,” one observer said. She is at the front lines of Canada’s pandemic response — and in the front row in government public appearances.

Brett GundlockGetty Images

[Canada,from A1]

FREELAND helped nudge the U.S. and Canada together in last year’s move to an updated North American trade agreement, which includes Mexico.

Marco UgarteAssociated Press

Los Angeles Times - 06.04.2020

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