The protester leaped on to the stage, lunged at Chrystia Freeland and screamed within inches of her face.
She didn’t flinch.
Her January campaign launch for leadership of the Liberal Party, and by extension Canada, was disrupted, but the encounter made a point no stump speech could have landed as effectively: She’s unflappable.
Ms. Freeland, a career journalist from Alberta who rose through elite institutions to become a top politician, is now running to replace the man who brought her into politics, Justin Trudeau.
On Sunday, Canada’s Liberal Party will announce the results of its election for a new leader, chosen by 400,000 members. The winner will also become Canada’s prime minister, though not for long: The party does not command a majority in Parliament, so has a weak grip on power. Federal elections must take place before October.
Ms. Freeland’s dramatic December resignation as finance minister, deputy prime minister, and all-around right-hand woman to Mr. Trudeau triggered his own decision to step down, plunging Canada into political turmoil.
This has come as Canada is thrust in crisis. This week President Trump made good on his threat to impose sweeping tariffs on Canadian goods and, while he eased some of those measures Thursday, he made plain he would continue to hit Canada’s economy with surcharges.
Canada retaliated, entering an uneven trade war with its closest economic partner. Mr. Trump has also menaced Canada in a more existential way, insisting he wants to make it the 51st state.
Grist in the Mill
Canadians are evaluating their political leaders on the basis of who is best to fight for Canada against Mr. Trump, polling shows. Ms. Freeland, 56, is the underdog. She is running against a friend, the former central banker Mark Carney, who is the front-runner.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly expressed his dislike of Ms. Freeland.
During his first presidency, she led the Canadian side on the renegotiation of the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement. By all accounts, she drove a tough bargain and won concessions for Canada.
When she announced she was stepping down in December, Mr. Trump posted, “Her behavior was totally toxic.”
And last week, in an interview with the British outlet The Spectator, he doubled down: “She’s a whack,” he said. “She’s absolutely terrible for the country.”
But Ms. Freeland seems to be relishing the fight.
“Donald Trump doesn’t like me very much,” she says with a smile on one of her ads. On her Instagram, she posted a New York Times article about Mr. Trump disparaging her, adding a dismissive caption: a manicure emoji.
“I have a strategy when it comes to the single biggest challenge Canada is facing: fighting for Canada, standing up to Trump,” she said in an interview with The Times at her Toronto home last month.
And despite the antipathy, she had praise for him. “I have a lot of respect for President Trump,” she said. “He is not afraid of being a disrupter, he glories in it, and he knows how to use that to his own benefit, and in many situations, it works,” she added.
Less ardent critics see Ms. Freeland’s effort to differentiate herself from Mr. Trudeau as too little too late, and hold her accountable for her central role in his now unpopular government.
Liberal Rise
Ms. Freeland’s had a modest childhood, raised by divorced parents and spending long stretches working on the family farm in Peace River, Alberta, and in Edmonton, where her mother, a Ukrainian immigrant, worked as a lawyer.
Ms. Freeland left Alberta on a scholarship at 16 to finish high school at a selective international school in Italy. She later studied at Harvard and was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford.
While at Harvard she spent time in Ukraine as an exchange student, and became involved in Ukraine’s then nascent independence movement. Her activism reportedly caught the eye of the K.G.B., which code-named her “Frida.”
Declassified K.G.B. documents showed the Soviet intelligence service loathed and admired her, calling her “a remarkable individual,” according to a report in the Globe and Mail.
She rose within the ranks of some of international journalism’s most venerable institutions, serving as a senior editor at The Financial Times and Reuters, with a brief stint at Canada’s Globe and Mail.
Ms. Freeland is married to Graham Bowley, a reporter on the Culture desk of The New York Times; they have three children.
Former co-workers and friends describe her as preternaturally active and decidedly no-frills: much of the furniture in her home is second hand. Most surfaces in her living room are covered in books and Ukrainian art hangs on the walls. She is known to bicycle everywhere, no matter the weather. She forgoes security.
Minister of Everything
In 2013, she moved her family from New York to Toronto, after Mr. Trudeau convinced her to run as a Liberal Party candidate.
He had just been elected as leader, and the party was in tatters, stuck in third place. Ms. Freeland takes pride in making what she calls “iconoclastic, high-risk decisions” and leaving journalism to join a party in bad shape was one of them.
“I called up lots of people, my friends, lifetime mentors, and everyone’s advice was: ‘Do not do it,’” she said.
Ms. Freeland won her seat and, within two years, Mr. Trudeau had brought the party back from the dead. At his swearing in as prime minister in 2015, she was by his side.
She served in key jobs, including foreign and finance minister. The joke in Ottawa was that she was his “minister of everything.” Her relentless energy and grasp of technical issues distinguished her, but her detractors said she came across as condescending or stiff in public.
She was heavily criticized for suggesting people cancel their Disney+ subscriptions as a response to an affordability crisis. Despite her own professed dedication to fiscal discipline, Ms. Freeland oversaw significant spending.
She remained loyal to Mr. Trudeau, even as Canadians started turning on him, and her leading role in his government has become a burden as she’s tried to separate herself from his legacy.
“People know there’s a difference between playing on a team and leading a team,” she said, adding that she was proud of the work she had done in government.
Family Drama
The end of her collaboration with Mr. Trudeau remains something of a mystery.
Mr. Trudeau, on a December Zoom call, told Ms. Freeland he would demote her to U.S.-Canada envoy and give her finance minister job to Mr. Carney, who is unelected.
Ms. Freeland and Mr. Trudeau had been in conflict over spending, believing some of his moves to ease financial burdens on Canadians were frivolous and politically motivated. She wanted to save money to deal with Mr. Trump’s tariffs, which she saw as inevitable.
She resigned soon after the Zoom call.
It was the final blow to Mr. Trudeau who, despite his unpopularity, had intended to remain Liberal leader and take the party to the next federal election.
Ms. Freeland said she did not anticipate her resignation would lead to Mr. Trudeau’s.
“On the morning of Dec. 16, when I resigned, my assumption was that the next day, Mark would become finance minister,” she said in her interview with The Times. “And I think the prime minister thought that, too.”
Mr. Trudeau has not commented on the events, nor has Mr. Carney, who did not agree to an interview.
Ms. Freeland’s campaign has been reshaping a new image outside Mr. Trudeau’s shadow. She has been churning out policy plans and broke with Mr. Trudeau on a controversial carbon tax that he had championed.
And she has tried to present herself as the grass roots, not the elite candidate, as most of Mr. Trudeau’s cabinet has endorsed Mr. Carney.
“A failing of the center left is that it can be a little too technocratic, and to act like the technocrats have all the answers,” she said.
One of the first decisions she’ll make if she wins, is decide when to hold a federal election. She’s not in a hurry.
“It may well be that when we look at the situation in March and further challenges ahead in April, I may decide as prime minister, we may decide as Liberals, and frankly it may be the view of Canadians, that Canada would be better off having a stable government for a few months,” she said.
As for Mr. Carney who is, among other things, her youngest child’s godfather, she has been careful not to attack him.
“I have a lot of respect for Mark,” she said. “I would be really happy if he were to serve as finance minister in my government.”
