Chrystia Freeland, Iron Lady
The Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister testifies to the POEC
Let’s begin with a question. Why are a raft of senior Cabinet Ministers, including the Prime Minister testifying under oath before a judicial inquiry? This is not business as usual. The answer could be that the government is committed to transparency, but I don’t think that quite flies. The answer I have come up with is that Cabinet Ministers and the Prime Minister value this public stage and believe they have a good story to tell about the use of the Emergencies Act. They have brought to the game a confidence and, in some cases an eloquence, that is buoyed by indicators from public opinion polls that on the whole Canadians support the need to use the Emergencies Act to end a protest movement that was harming the country and individuals.
(See news of an interesting poll out of Alberta: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/freedom-convoy-opinions-alberta-1.6571653)
Exhibit A in this confidence and eloquence is the Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister, Chrystia Freeland. Without boasting about it, her testimony made clear her central role in Cabinet, which extends to geopolitical issues stemming from Russia and Ukraine, to trade matters especially with the United States, and, of course, to stewardship of the finances and economy of Canada.
Minister Freeland gave us an insight into her “red box”—all the key files that she carried around with her (not literally) during the lead up to the Freedom Convoy events. These included preparation of the budget, steering the Canadian economy into a post-COVID recovery, worrying about the implications of US proposals for “Buy Back America,” which might have deeply stiffed the Canadian economy, concerns about fragile global supply chains, and last, but not least, intelligence that was coming in from US sources about the prospect of a Russian invasion of Ukraine. That’s quite a red box.
All that is interesting prelude to the question of when the Minister of Finance first began to turn her attention to the Freedom Convoy. For the Public Safety Minister it was January 25 (four days before the Freedom Convoy arrived in force in downtown Ottawa). For Ms. Freeland it was February 6 (the second weekend of the Ottawa occupation). It was not clear why her attention was fixed only relatively late in the chronology of the convoy protests. The place was the second meeting of the Cabinet committee on Safety, Security and Emergencies, chaired by Bill Blair. The Minister is not a regular member of this standing committee, but can drop in any time. And so she did—why? Her answer was that she was starting to hear concerns about the impacts of the Freedom Convoy from business leaders.
The following day, February 7, the Ambassador Bridge at Windsor was blockaded. In Minister Freeland’s words, this blockade “escalated thing exponentially.” Two days later the Department of Finance was looking at options, in government speak—looking in their “tool box.” The conclusion was that there wasn’t much there. The FINTRAC (Financial Transactions Reporting Analysis Centre Canada) mandate was very limited, its “line of sight was very blinkered.” Maybe the Bank Act could be used to freeze accounts but this needed further exploration. What was clear was that there was insufficient time for legislative amendments.
The next significant alert for the Finance Minister was a conversation with the principal White House economic adviser to the President, which included a worrying note about US concerns about the integration of economic sectors, particularly automative manufacture, between the two countries and the extent to which the US could be made vulnerable by the Freedom Convoy blockades. The Finance Minister called this a dangerous moment for Canada and a seminal moment in her thinking.
While we are lurking at the elbow of the Finance Minister, we can note that the next critical development for her was a very unusual Sunday morning meeting she held with the CEOs of all the major Canadian banks. Minister Freeland described this as a check-in to see whether the banking sector leaders had the “same level of concern” as she did about the economic harms, short term and potentially long term, that the Freedom Convoy blockades were causing. They did. The main points seemed to be that existing enforcement tools were taking too long, and that the situation was not under control. There were concerns that Convoy fund-raising could shift to untouchable crypto and continue to expand its war chest for the long haul.
Ms. Freeland also recalled a conversation that really hit home with her—it was a shocking thing to hear. One major US investor, in conversation with a Canadian bank CEO, stated that he wouldn’t invest a red cent in a “banana republic.” People say all kinds of things, but big money speaks.
February 13 was a key day in the government’s crisis decision-making. Ms. Freeland had her meeting with the bankers in the morning, a Cabinet Incident Response Group meeting in the afternoon and a full Cabinet meeting in the evening. Things were being teed up for the invocation of the Emergencies Act on the following afternoon.
What did this all feel like, for government decision-makers? Ms. Freeland gave us some valuable clues. The government was operating, as she put it, “in the fog of war.” Things were moving very quickly. There were gaps in knowledge, especially around foreign funding and possible foreign interference. Ministers had to rely on the best available information, including open source intelligence. She did not characterize how good she thought this “best available information” was, but there was a telling comment about the limitations of intelligence delivered to her red box by government officials, which she likened to “very sifted flour.” That’s a new one on me. But the point was that such reliance wasn’t good enough, in her view. She argued that Ministers needed to pay attention to their own feeds of open source intelligence and to “hear for yourself.” That’s a telling comment and needs further exploration—but it wasn't pursued. The Canadian national security and intelligence system should be very concerned about this perception.
One thing was not in doubt. In the mind of the Finance Minister, the Canadian economy was under serious threat.
This led to a final, and fascinating, exchange between Commission lead counsel, Shantona Chaudhury, and the Minister. This exchange is as close as we get to understanding how the Minister aligned her pressing concerns about economic security with the legal thresholds of the Emergencies Act, especially concerning ‘threats to the security of Canada.’ Ms. Freeland made two points. One was that she saw no daylight between economic security and national security. National security, in her view, was founded on economic security for both the country and for individual Canadians. The other point, and here she references the policies of Russia in weaponizing energy supplies, is that geo-economics is a tool in geopolitics. In other words, deliberate efforts to undermine economic security, in turn impact on national security.
This thinking takes us to a problem highlighted by the National Security and Intelligence Adviser, Jody Thomas, who told the Commission that one problem the government faced was the absence of any policy guidance on national security.
See a previous newsletter column, “The NSIA takes the stand”
Ideally, Ministers as a whole should have been equipped with a comprehensive understanding of national security policy before the arrival of the Freedom Convoy. They weren’t. This needs to change.
Cross-examination didn’t add much to the picture. The Freedom Convoy counsel, (is there another word for ubiquitous), Brendan Miller did his thing, including accusing the government of illegal redactions. He couldn’t deny himself the opportunity to yet again press his ridiculous conspiracy theory about government agent provocateurs carrying Nazi flags. As someone has said, he makes an excellent case for why the federal government was unwilling to talk to protest organizers (there were other good reasons, in my view, and Ms. Freeland also spoke to this). It should be noted that his request to the Commission to be allowed to present evidence about this conspiracy theory and call “witnesses” was refused on the basis that there was no obvious evidence to support it and that it would be a distraction (to put it mildly) from the Commission’s business. Good luck to him with the libel action.
Counsel for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) launched a legitimate line of questioning about the importance of protest activity in a democracy but spoiled it by an absurd analogy drawn between the Solidarity protests in communist Poland and the Freedom Convoy protesters. One has to be careful about mixing historical apples and oranges.
Other legal counsel tried to present themselves as superior political decision-makers. I am not sure why they think that is the case. One counsel went over the top to suggest that the government was simply over-whelmed by all the pressures of events that faced its, especially pressure from the United States. There is a difference between crisis decision-making and being overwhelmed. Crisis decision-making means making decision in a hurry with less than perfect information, as Minister Freeland suggested. That might have been a more fruitful line of questioning.
There is much to feed on in the Minister’s testimony. We learned about her files, her preoccupations, her meetings, her thought process, her convictions. They all vectored to the invocation of the Emergencies Act.
The Minister came away from her time on the Commission stand with no real dents in her armour. I can’t help drawing a parallel between Freeland and a former British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher was known as the “iron lady” (not necessarily in a complimentary way). Freeland is a very different person, different persona, more intellectual, with a very different politics. But there is a steeliness to her.