Trudeau names LeBlanc Canada finance minister with government in chaos

Ottawa: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has named Dominic LeBlanc as Canada’s finance minister to replace Chrystia Freeland, who shocked the country with a scathing resignation letter that suggested the government is mishandling its preparation for the return of Donald Trump.

LeBlanc was sworn in during a late Monday afternoon ceremony in Ottawa. The 57-year-old has been serving as public safety minister, overseeing Canada’s border security response after Trump threatened 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico last month.

He’s a close friend and ally of Trudeau and has been in a number of key cabinet roles since the prime minister swept to power in 2015. When Trudeau flew to Florida to meet Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort last month, he took LeBlanc with him.

“We understand that cost of living for a huge, huge number of Canadians is a very significant issue,” LeBlanc told reporters. “That’ll obviously be a huge focus in my work as the minister of finance.”

“We need to also be extremely focused on the challenges that the incoming American administration will pose with respect to the potential imposition of tariffs,” LeBlanc said.

Freeland’s resignation, which she announced publicly in a social media post shortly after 9am in Ottawa, caused disarray and confusion in the Canadian capital. She had been scheduled to release an update on the government’s fiscal and economic situation in the afternoon.

When her resignation was announced, finance department officials were in a building not far from Parliament Hill, preparing to hand out documents outlining the fiscal plan to journalists, economists and others under an embargo. With no minister in place, officials guarded the documents for hours before eventually releasing them.

Meanwhile, Trudeau’s political opponents, and even some members of his own party, ramped up their calls for the prime minister to quit. Jagmeet Singh, the leader of the New Democratic Party - which has been helping the government by supporting its budgets and other legislation - said Trudeau needed to resign. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, the odds-on favorite to win the next election, repeated his calls for the government to dissolve parliament and call a national vote.

“It’s chaos right now up in Ottawa,” Ontario Premier Doug Ford said.

The finance department’s documents showed the government’s financial position is deteriorating. The budget deficit for the fiscal year that ended in March ballooned by more than 50%, to C$62 billion ($43.5 billion). The deficit for the current fiscal year is now expected to hit C$48.3 billion, about 20% higher than projections made in April.

Freeland, a former journalist, had been finance minister since 2020 and held a number of senior cabinet posts before that. But she said she couldn’t carry on in the cabinet while she was at odds with Trudeau over fiscal policy and how to respond to Trump.

“Our country today faces a grave challenge,” Freeland wrote in her letter. “We need to take that threat extremely seriously. That means keeping our fiscal powder dry today, so we have the reserves we may need for a coming tariff war. That means eschewing costly political gimmicks, which we can ill afford and which make Canadians doubt that we recognise the gravity of the moment.”

The phrase “political gimmicks” is likely a reference to the announcement last month that the government plans to implement a two-month sales-tax holiday on certain items, such as toys and Christmas trees, and send C$250 cheques to millions of Canadians. The tax holiday has started, but so far the government doesn’t appear to have the necessary political support to pass the rebate checks in the House of Commons.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, an outspoken critic of Trudeau, took aim at the prime minister’s claim that he’s a strong supporter of women in politics. Throughout his time in office, Trudeau has had a roughly equal number of women and men in the cabinet. But Freeland is not the first prominent woman to run into conflict with the prime minister during his nine years in power.

“All I would say is that Alberta has had three female premiers, and there hasn’t ever been a female leader of the federal Liberal Party,” Smith told reporters. “So I would say that perhaps somebody who declares himself to be such a supporter of women, maybe this is an opportunity for them to demonstrate that.”

LeBlanc’s appointment will cool speculation that Trudeau is about to lure Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of Canada and Bank of England, into the government. Carney serves in a number of philanthropic and business roles, including as chair of Brookfield Asset Management and Bloomberg Inc.