A new biography promises unvarnished access to the real Chrystia Freeland. Instead, it offers the same old mythmaking.
Peter MCFARLANE
Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su
Review of Chrystia: From Peace River to Parliament Hill by Catherine Tsalikis (House of Anansi, 2024)
A recent biography of Chrystia Freeland doesn’t address the former cabinet minister’s current bid to become leader of the Liberal Party, but it feels instructive.
Amid lackluster polling numbers, the prevailing sense seems to be that Freeland’s campaign will not end well. A life story filled with examples of “ambition with ammunition,” as her friends describe her exceptional personal drive, is also replete with instances in which she fell short of her desired prize—generally because her colleagues came to see her as an untrustworthy self-promoter.
Jan Wong, who worked with her at The Globe and Mail, is quoted in the book as having the sense that Freeland was a total phoney.
“When she talked—I just got this ‘I can’t trust you vibe,’” Wong said. “She was determined to rise, so she managed upwards. As an underling, I felt nervous around her. The best editors have their reporters’ interests at heart, and I never felt that with her.”
Even with remarks like Wong’s, author Catherine Tsalikis tries very hard to put Freeland’s best foot forward. She rushes past concerns like those Wong voiced and waves off thorny issues like the prominent role that Freeland’s Nazi-collaborating grandfather apparently played in her political formation.
Tsalikis admits that the core of the narrative for this book comes from Freeland’s family, friends and colleagues. Sensitive issues were vetted by Chrystia Freeland’s staff. But the description of this book as an “unauthorized biography” gives it the appearance of a hard-hitting exposé.
A monument dedicated to the “Fighters of Ukraine,” including the Galizien SS Division, in St. Michael’s cemetery in Edmonton. Michael Chomiak was part of the group that had the monument erected.
Tsalikis begins to earn her keep early in the book when she stick-handles one of the greatest PR challenges for Freeland: the obvious falsehoods she has spun about her grandfather, Michael Chomiak.
Given the prominence of her support for a particular vision of Ukraine—neoliberalized, ardently nationalist, and militantly aligned with the West over Russia—Freeland’s frequent references to her grandfather as a political inspiration present a difficult but necessary needle for any biographer to thread.
In essence, the description of Chomiak’s life that Tsalikis provides is this: Chomiak worked for German intelligence during WWII as editor of the Krakivski Visti, a Krakow-based pro-Nazi Ukrainian-language newspaper. After the war, he came to Canada where he was a cantor at his church and helped “found various local Ukrainian organizations.”
That anodyne description fails to mention a number of pertinent details.
For instance, in one of those “local Ukrainian organizations,” Chomiak worked with Waffen SS veteran—and former University of Alberta chancellor—Peter Savaryn to erect the 20-foot cross in Edmonton’s St. Michael’s cemetery that celebrates the Ukrainian SS and Ukrainian militias who murdered or participated in the murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews and tens of thousands of Poles.
In writing about Chomiak’s wartime role at Krakivski Visti, Tsalikis uses similarly vague language.
“Considered by most historians to be deeply antisemitic,” she writes about the paper, “it followed the ideology of the General Government, which it was substantially dependent on for support, and its pages were filled with Nazi propaganda attacking Jews, Poles, and Soviets. But it also contained a layer of Ukrainian nationalism, which would have appealed to Michael.”
Extensive reporting from journalists, including David Pugliese, has uncovered that Krakivski Visti, like many other propaganda outlets of its time, was seized from Jewish owners by the Nazi regime in Poland and handed to people sympathetic to the regime—such as Chomiak.
Graduate student Ernest Gyidel studied Krakivski Visti for his PhD. Through his research, Gyidel demonstrated that Chomiak was deeply involved in day-to-day management of the paper and had commissioned some of the paper’s most vile antisemitic articles.
Tsalikis’s book references Gyidel’s work while sidestepping his damning conclusions, managing to imply that Chomiak was drawn to and responsible for the paper’s Ukrainian nationalism more than its extreme antisemitism.
In addressing the 2017 news cycle in which Chomiak’s past and Freeland’s effusive praise of him as a political inspiration came to light, Tsalikis notes that Freeland maneuvered through this “difficult situation” by calling it Russian disinformation.
Like Freeland at the time, Tsalikis side steps any accurate accounting of what happened.
With the burden of the Nazi-collaborating grandfather out of the way, Tsalikis gets to work on Freeland myth-making.
Chrystia Freeland was born in Peace River, Alta., where her parents, Halyna Chomiak and Donald Freeland, moved after meeting at law school in Edmonton.
Even in Peace River, Freeland’s mother spoke Ukrainian to her. But it was after her parents divorced and Freeland moved with her mother back to Edmonton at nine years old that her Ukrainian education began in earnest.
She attended Ukrainian language classes and Plast, the ultra-nationalist Ukrainian girl scouts, at the Ukrainian Youth Centre which was originally named after the Ukrainian holocaust perpetrator and mass murderer Roman Shukhevych. It is now called the Ukrainian Youth Unity Complex, but even today Shukhevych’s statue stands outside of the building.
Following in her grandfather’s footsteps, Freeland was hired at age 16 for a summer job to work on the Ukrainian encyclopedia. Chomiak had worked on the same project in the 1970s, for his former Krakivski Visti boss.
Rising through the ranks
With the breakup of the Soviet Union, Freeland headed to Kyiv and Moscow to begin her journalism career.
As one of the few Western reporters who spoke Russian and Ukrainian, she filled an important role in reporting in Eastern Europe at a tumultuous time. Working for the London-based Financial Times, she was a competent reporter, although Tsalikis admits that with Freeland, “the line between journalist and activist was blurred.”
Freeland’s rise at The Financial Times was impressive. From freelancer she progressed to Moscow bureau chief and her agility at “managing up” eventually had her reassigned to London as the UK news editor—though many of those working for her told Tsalikis that they thought Freeland was out of her depth.
The skeptics might have been right, because after only a few months as the Financial Times UK news editor, she left for a job as deputy editor of The Globe and Mail.
Her stint at The Globe was not a happy one. Wong’s assessment of Freeland was echoed by many of her former Globe colleagues, who remember that “she was more interested in advancing her own career than supporting them in theirs.”
One of Freeland’s undeniable talents, her sister Natalka tells Tsalikis, was “becoming close to people who she thought were important,” and this was a feature of her time in Toronto.
“She worked hard at being the face of The Globe and Mail,” Tsalikis writes, “attending and sponsoring events, accepting speaking assignments and sitting down with Bay Street executives and CEOs to encourage them to write for the paper.”
While she charmed the business elite, Tsalikis says, “Chrystia was hurt by all the hostility” from her colleagues. Friends said that “in Toronto she felt like a big fish in the small pond.” So she headed back to London to The Financial Times.
Those years at the FT, from 2001 to 2005, were the best of Freeland’s journalism career. She was editor Andrew Gowers’ protégé and was made editor of the weekend edition just one year after her arrival. Some believed she was in line for the role of news editor.
Yet when Gowers was fired because of declining readership, Freeland was passed over. Lionel Barber, the FT’s U.S. bureau chief, was given the job—and Barber, who was not a fan of Freeland, sent her to New York to his old post.
Freeland was devastated, Tsalikis writes, and went through many “tearful meetings” before she accepted the demotion.
But for a woman who Tsalikis describes as “a fabulous, focused networker,” New York became an important new playground. As head of the FT’s U.S. bureau, she pushed her way into the American media market, becoming a staple on the American talk show circuit and moving “in circles with chief executives, investment bankers, ambassadors and billionaires.”
The FT was less impressed by her work and they presented Freeland with what she considered a “constructive dismissal” by shipping her out of the New York limelight to Washington.
With her FT career taking a nosedive, Chrystia jumped ship again to Reuters, where she was appointed Global Editor at Large. She continued to be a fixture on American talk shows and a regular at Davos, but once again, Freeland was not liked by her colleagues and she was moved to the digital operation as head of the Reuters Next project, which she never managed to get off the ground.
Justin Trudeau looks on as Chrystia Freeland and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy greet each other.Photo: Adam Scotti
From journalism to politics
As her journalism career was faltering, Freeland found an appealing exit ramp.
She met Justin Trudeau’s campaign strategist Katie Telford at an event in Banff during Trudeau’s Liberal leadership campaign. Telford told her to keep in touch and Freeland, ever the networker, invited Telford and Justin Trudeau to the Toronto launch of her book Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else.
Trudeau had by this time been elected leader of the Liberal Party. The two had a private meeting and hit it off. As a result, Freeland was offered the safe Liberal seat of Toronto Centre in the 2013 by-election.
Freeland’s entry into Canadian politics coincided with a political explosion in Kyiv. What is now known as the Euromaidan began as a series of anti-corruption protests before being hijacked by extreme right-wing groups. The reconstituted movement succeeded in overthrowing the Russia-aligned, but democratically elected, Yanukovych government—with American support.
Russia reacted to the replacement of the pro-Russian government in Kyiv with a pro-NATO one by seizing control of Crimea, where their Black Sea fleet was already located.
In response, Freeland began to immediately advocate inside her party for Canada to take tough action against Russia, including kicking them out of the G8.
At the time, the Liberal Party still held a balanced view of its role in foreign policy. During the 2015 election, Trudeau emphasized the importance of regaining the UN Security Council seat Canada had lost under hawkish Stephen Harper. He also promised Canada would return to the role of “a fair-minded and constructive peace builder.”
When the Liberals won in a landslide, Trudeau appointed Stéphane Dion as Foreign Affairs Minister. Dion argued for restoring relations with Russia despite its incursions into Ukraine. He reasoned that Canadians must engage with leaders with whom they did not agree, and that cutting ties entirely could be a mistake.
Freeland was initially given the international trade portfolio in cabinet but, according to Tsalikis, she was already fiercely lobbying for a return to hardline Harper-era foreign policy, especially on Ukraine. In January 2017, Trudeau relented and replaced Dion with Freeland.
Masked protesters brandish shovels at the Euromaidan protests. Photo: Mstyslav Chernov
An insider tells Tsalikis that initially “Trudeau was not fully committed to either world views,” but “eventually Chrystia was able to get the prime minister onside.” In the end, the official says, “Trudeau’s foreign policy was actually mostly Chrystia Freeland’s foreign policy.”
Other government insiders confirmed this, telling Tsalikis: “It’s hard to overstate how central and critical Chrystia Freeland has been to this government’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and how much the prime minister has relied on her for advice.”
“The amount of money and support we have given is huge—I mean, we’re talking billions and billions of dollars. Abroad, she persuaded her counterparts to impose harsh sanctions on Russia’s central bank, in the hopes of crippling its economy.”
In the end, funding the Ukraine-Russia war instead of promoting the peaceful settlement that was being negotiated between Ukraine and Russia in April 2022 has been a disaster for Ukraine and for Europe.
Ukraine has lost 20 per cent of its territory and millions of citizens—most of those have fled the country, but some reports place the number of dead as high as 100,000—and the war is sustained only by Ukrainian army “recruiters” kidnapping men from the streets.
But Canada’s policy, which has been Freeland’s policy, has been to double down at every turn.
Freeland showed her lack of diplomatic skills in her handling of the arrest of the Chinese Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou at the behest of the Americans in 2018.
She immediately fired Canada’s Ambassador to China for suggesting publicly that “the best outcome for Canada would be if Meng wasn’t handed over to the Americans.”
After more than two years of fraught relations, which included the arrest of two Canadians in China, Canada finally released Meng to return to her homeland. By then, the damage had already been done.
Reading Tsalikis’ book resolves any mystery around why virtually all of Freeland’s cabinet colleagues—arguably the people who know her best in a professional capacity—are backing her main rival, Mark Carney, in the leadership race.
The unkindest cut came from Mélanie Joly, who worked closely with Freeland in the Global Affairs Ministry. Joly waited until 15 minutes before Freeland was scheduled to announce her leadership bid to publicly knee-cap her by announcing that she was supporting Mark Carney because “he has a clear vision and brings unparalleled economic experience” to the job.
As she watched herself falling further behind Carney in the race to replace Trudeau, the best Freeland could offer to counter this was a supportive post from conservative American talk show host Bill Maher.
As she enters the final stretch in the leadership race, it seems that the woman with unlimited ambition is finally running out of ammunition.
Her lasting legacy, if she has one, will likely be Canada’s current foreign policy, which she had such a major role in shaping. Once an important honest broker in the world, Chrystia’s Canada finds itself not only involved in a losing proxy war with Russia, but with continuing poor relations with China.
Trudeau’s initial hopes of restoring Canada’s reputation as “a fair-minded and constructive peace builder” fell victim to Freeland’s drum-beat foreign policy that views compromise and even basic diplomacy as weakness. Canada will be facing the consequences of this for years to come.
Original article: breachmedia.ca
