FORSETH – Freeland is now in the driver’s seat to become Liberal leader
(Image: Chrystia Freeland-Facebook)
“On Friday, you told me you no longer want me to serve as your Finance Minister. Upon reflection, I have concluded that the only honest and viable path is for me to resign from the Cabinet“~~ Chrystia Freeland.
THAT’S THE BEGINNING of Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s letter of resignation, as Finance Minister, to Justin Trudeau.
As one reads the rest, it is apparent that for quite some time, she has not been in agreement (one could almost say vehemently) with the economic policies of Justin Trudeau.
I think the last sentence of Freeland’s letter of resignation from cabinet is very telling, as to her future plans:
“I look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues as a Liberal Member of Parliament, and I am committed to running again for my seat in the next federal election.”
While 338 Canada has Freeland’s University-Rosedale seat as a toss-up between her and the NDP, I’d have to think that what’s she’s done today (basically dumping Trudeau), will aid her in winning that riding come next election.
With Trudeau losing another cabinet minister yesterday, (Housing Minister Sean Smith), and saying he will not run again, there is little left of Trudeau’s backbench that’s fit for ministerial roles. As support for Justin Trudeau, and the federal Liberal Party, has been steadily dropping (like a lead balloon, the number of MPs declining to run again, against all odds of winning) has steadily grown, and will continue to do so.
Additionally, another call from West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast – Sea-to-Sky Country MP Patrick Weiler calling on Trudeau to, “… step aside and allow the initiation of a leadership process” has all but doomed Trudeau. So much so it is very much a toss-up which party will become the official opposition; the Bloc … the NDP … or the Liberals. With disaster looming, they could actually fall to become the forth place party in the House of Commons.
With Freeland’s resignation today (Dec. 16, 2024), and with a major defeat coming up for the Liberal Party of Canada, I believe that will put her in the driver’s seat, in a campaign to win the leadership of the party …
… but first, she’ll have to win her seat.
Alan Forseth is a Kamloops resident. For 40 years he has been active, in a number of capacities, in local, provincial and federal politics, including running as a candidate for the BC Reform Party in the 1996 provincial election. He is a member of the BC Conservative Party and was the campaign manager for the party in the Kamloops-North Thompson riding in this year’s provincial election.
ArmchairMayor.ca 
So let me get this straight, you’re equating the desires of Ukrainian independence from a century of Russian authoritarian rule which recently annexed Crimea to the desires of 2 foreign totalitarian regimes placing missile silos in Mexico, a free and independent nation with no historical ties and an ocean away from either of these 2 dictatorships, do I have that right?
This would be a false equivalency, Ukraine’s desire for independence is in striking contrast to Mexico’s need for missile silos in the scenario presented. Mexico is an autonomous nation, yes America is a dominant influence but they are not enslavers literally or figuratively, nor have lands been recently annexed or military bases stationed.
Ukraine has been a pawn of successive Russian authoritarian regimes for well over a century, the Ukrainian people desire for a definitive independent separation, this ought not be ignored because a couple of dictators don’t like it. Perestroika and glasnost opened the door to freedom for the Ukrainian people, it seems selfish, cowardly and inhumane to slam that door when most of Eastern Europe has already passed thru it, didn’t we learn anything from the Berlin Wall? If we believe in freedom and self determination then we need to give it more than lip service, especially when it gets messy.
Ukrainians would die for the freedoms Mexicans currently have, in fact they are presently dying for them and that’s why we ought to be supporting them. I do not condone the continued use of the Ukrainian peoples as the sacrificial lambs in this game of brinkmanship between current and former super powers. It is not Russia’s nor Putin’s manifest destiny to restore the glory of territorial limits of the former Soviet Union.
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
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Mac according to your comment to Ms. Scott Ukraine is next door to North America and its OK for Nuland to spend $5 billion to overthrow a democratically elected government that we recognized and hand it over to Maidan terrorists. Ukrainian professor at U of Ottawa explains in detail how the government of Ukraine was overthrown by demonstrators using snipers to shoot their own people https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-67121-0. Freeland, a Catholic was part of the Nuland circle of conspirators like many Maidan participants.
You chose Niemöller’s quote, which is not correct, to justify your simplistic narrative There are many versions of this quote but you chose the one where you omit communists and substituted socialist as many others have done during the Cold War. Omission is an attempt to deceive.
Substitution of “socialists” for “communists” is one’s pejorative view of communism. Niemöller was a nationalist a fascist who opposed the Weimar Republic, which had the most democratic government in Europe. Niemöller voted three times, for Hitler but opposed Hitler’s Evangelical Protestant Church for which he was imprisoned. We forgive Niemöller’s love for Hitler and used him as a “poster boy” when he saw the light in prison and denounced Hitler but Freeland has not denounced the skeletons in her closet in fact, she attempted to cover them up.
Niemöller abandoned his nationalist worldview and anti-Bolshevik stance after he was freed from prison. His quote is from sermons in post war Germany and that is all most people know about him. And sometimes they changed the quote to suit their anti communist narrative as you did here.
Ms. Scott uses a good example of Mexico or she could have used any Caribbean, Latin or South American state which European and American foreign policy has impoverished and enslaved and continues to attack. Yes, the Latinos love us so much that they risk their life every day to cross the Rio Grande. Maybe this general will shed some light on your historical acumen and why they are poor. https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/115545.Smedley_D_Butler
I would suggest to you that Putin was the last man who wanted this conflict. His life was shaped by WWII and the history of his people. Russia has a long history of being invaded from every direction, but especially from the West, Vikings, Mongols from the East-several wars, A Catholic Teutonic Knights Order, Swedes-several wars, Poles-several wars, Turks-several wars, Britain-several wars, France-several wars, Germans-several wars, Japanese-two wars, USA Canada and 20 others, Britain France, and Cold War. Usually it was one country, or one empire or three but several times all of Europe. Russia grew every time they were attacked.
On the last note Ukraine and Belo-Russia have always been part of Russia and Russia was always a part of Ukraine and Belo-Russia except when they were attacked and divided by invaders Poles, Latvians, Swedes and so on. Kievan Rus and the Pripet Marshes is the original homeland of the Slavs
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Nuland was an American diplomat and the $5billion you’re referring to was spent over a period of 23 years in aid and investment in Ukraine, which added up to $5 per person per yr over this period starting in 1991, the year Ukraine gained its independence. This aid was provided to multiple elected governments not just the one. Moreover, what you call the “Maiden terrorists” who were responsible for 100plus protesters killed in mass protests, the Ukrainian courts call “Russian trained police snipers” ordered by Putin’s presidential puppet, Viktor Yanukovych, who is now in exile in Russia. Potayto, potahto.
Replace Socialist with Communist if you’d like, but doesn’t that make the poem more of an indictment if “communist” is more of a pejorative term?
“Freeland has not denounced the skeletons in her closet”, what skeletons, again you’re trying to make a connection where one doesn’t exist, the alleged skeletons of her grandfather are not hers to bare.
“I would suggest to you that Putin was the last man who wanted this conflict.” I would suggest to you sir, that you ought to look for an editor. I’m quite confident in saying every Ukrainian man of fighting age living in Ukraine wanted this conflict significantly less than Putin.
Zelenskyy received 75% of the vote over the incumbent president, Petro Poroshenko, in a “free and fair” election, both men campaigned on closer ties to the west and not to surrender the country’s eastern lands, including Crimea. The election was in 2019, at that time and as of today, no discernible group exists in Ukraine which wants continued ties with Russia, yet you continue to support the despot Putin in his reconquest of the Ukrainian lands and people.
You’ve painted yourself into a corner supporting Putin’s annexation of Ukraine simply because Chrystia Freeland hasn’t addressed the House of Commons and stated her grandfather hustled for Hitler rather than Stalin. I’m sure the 40 million Ukrainians living in Ukraine respect your position. Correction, make that 37 million, Crimea has already been lost.
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If you want to turn a blind eye to reality you are free to do so. Many Ukrainians died in liberating Europe from your “freedom Fighters” disease ultranationalist Ukrainian collaborators who exterminated 1.6 million of the 2.5 million Jews who had lived in Ukraine before the war.
Poles and other nationals were exterminated in equal numbers in Western Ukraine for purity of race. You seem to forget that 900,000 Jews and many Poles survived “the stench of antisemitism” of these Ukrainian “freedom fighters” which you protect, because they escaped to the safety of the USSR in 1941.
The facts are not on your side and for me protecting a nazi collaborator is disgusting. For me the truth is worthy of some respect and should not be swept under the multicultural carpet of Canadian values or “someone born 25 years after the event”. Such reasoning shows disrespect for every Canadian soldier who gave his or her life on the beaches of Normandy, and Dieppe.
“Holodomor Genocide” is not only a Ukrainian tragedy as its scale was equally shared by all Soviet citizens in Soviet Europe. The famine, which took many lives, was caused by Stalin’s policies to collectivise agriculture, Kulak reaction to that policy, and the Sukhovei hot dry winds from Central Asia that every 4 years or so can desiccate vegetation and sterilise pollen.
“Great Terror” did not specifically target Ukrainians, it targeted the Soviet military leadership which cost the Soviet Union dearly in military eldership in the early days of “Operation Barbarossa”. Look for the French and Czech secret service connection in this one.
“After WWII, Kubijovych was fixated on creatingThe Encyclopedia of Ukraine. Since his 1976 visit to Canada, the encyclopedia has been a project of the Canadian Institute for Ukrainian Studies, at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton. Both Nazi-propagandist Chomiak and his granddaughter Chrystia Freeland, worked on Kubijovych’s encyclopedia” and wrote articles on Kubijovych’s propaganda effort.
Mac, you write “we should be thankful for her and any other brilliant mind that sacrifices their career to become parliamentarians regardless of what political stripe they are.” I will provide you with this one link https://coat.ncf.ca/research/Chomiak-Freeland/C-F_3.htm which includes some 21 other links on this issue. This was the fuel that was swept under the carpet of “canadian values” that lit the present fire in Ukraine, a tragedy that could have and should have been avoided .
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Another piece to circumvent the facts and justify smearing pro Ukariane independence. You smear Freeland with the brush of antisemitism by saying she worked indirectly for, “the Nazi’s leading Ukrainian collaborationist, Volodymyr Kubijovych”, yet you fail to provide the least transient of linkage between the two, as they never met or corresponded.
Allow me to help you out, her grandfather Michael Chomiak, was a Ukrainian journalist during WWll and surely he influenced her in this field. He along with his wife and children, including Freeland’s mother, emigrated to Canada after the war. At this time no one knew Chomiak had any connections to Nazi propagandists as a newspaper editor, this was not discovered until after his death in 1984, when Freeland was 15 years old. And who did the discovery, none other than historian John-Paul Himka, who was married to Chrystia Chomiak, Freeland’s aunt and namesake. You write a narrative as though the entire family knew and supported the grandfathers secret past of antisemitism, when in fact nobody knew, Freeland’s mother wasn’t born until 1946.
Freeland’s mother was a member of the federal NDP who ran in the 1988 “Free Trade” federal election, won’t the nexus of a daughter of an alleged antisemite taint the entire NDP party as being supporters of antisemitism and Nazi sympathizers using your logic?
As far as your historical simplicity, your bias is clearly obvious and only strengthens my position. Ukrainians, during the war, pre and post era, where nothing more than pawns to the German and Russian powers, life under Hitler was no less cruel, barbaric and inhumane than under Stalin. Those who bought into Nazi propaganda were no more guilty of atrocities than those siding with the Soviet Union.
You make the mistake of viewing history through the lens of the present day and imposing today’s values on previous eras. Reprehensible behaviour of today is quite different than during that era when surviving the day was an every day existential threat. People will rationalize all sorts of abhorrent behaviour and believe the most vile thoughts about others when survival is pushed to their limits. Stalin vs Hitler, how do you chose between these two most violent dictators, it’s more than a simple catch 22 when you and your family’s lives are in the balance and there’s no door #3.
Jefferson was a slave holder, does this diminish his contributions to democracy? Both JFL and MLK was a philanderers, does this mean their contributions to civil rights ought to be omitted? German theologian Martin Luther was the father of the Protestant Reformation, he was also a renowned antisemite, should we cancel him? Michael Chomiak may have been an antisemite, he may have been a Nazi propagandist because he believed in the cause or maybe he did so to survive. Whatever the case, it’s not something you can attach blame to his grand daughter for, the fathers misdeeds do not follow a “CONTINUUM” to his children let alone his children’s children, yet you try to smear Freeland and her entire family with his stench, shame on you.
I’m rather surprised at your simplistic view of history, you seem to think there’s always a right and a wrong and ignore the grey areas of the margins. This is consistent with winners of wars, they always write history leaning to their direction whilst in the sanctimonious safety of the victors perch, leaving it to revisionists to correct the errors. It’s a rather elementary view, I expected more.
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Is she really going to make effort to become a footnote, though?
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If there’s any Liberal worse than Trudeau, it’s Freeland. She scares me–is there an actual human being with a heart in there somewhere? Haven’t seen it so far.
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Her resignation letter is hypocritical. She lobbied for a reactionary foreign policy, a war monger who participated in overthrow of Bolivia’s indigenous president Evo Morales and worked to overthrow Venezuelan government. Lobbied for billions of Canada’s tax dollars for Ukraine. She is in part responsible for the tragedy of Ukraine that could have been avoided.
” Her grandfather, Michael Chomiak, was a Ukrainian Nazi collaborator and propagandist during World War II.” Her summer job was to write articles under supervision of her grandfather’s wartime boss, the Nazi’s leading Ukrainian collaborationist, Volodymyr Kubijovych.
Ukrainian people have paid a huge price in the past and now but the grandchildren should not be tarred with the same feathers of their ancestors, however when the grandchild says that her Nazi grandfather was a “freedom fighter” we should all have a problem with that.
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History often repeats itself, as the saying goes. Should we in Canada “cut her some slack” about Ukraine because Ukraine is her “homeland”? She is Ukrainian by descent and perhaps, blood is thicker than water.
Could she have saved countless Ukrainian lives from the attacks by the empire from its eastern border? One woman she is but maybe not of the stature of Esther.
Maybe one day, we in Canada will find ourselves as a target of nuclear devices fired from Russia; we can’t rule out that possibility. Who will have any sympathy for us then?
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Using the atrocities of the holocaust to discredit someone born 25 years after the event is disgusting, this is a new low for you. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, but you’ll make an exception for the grand daughter. Ever heard of the “Holodomor Genocide” initiated by Stalin which killed upwards to 3.5 million Ukrainians in 1932/3 alone or the “Great Terror”, which led to hundreds of thousands of innocent Ukrainian deaths along with millions of political prisoners and exiles in the years leading up to the WWII? Ya, there were plenty of Ukrainian citizens who sought coverage from the Nazi’s for fear of Stalin’s gulags or worse and yes they appropriately called themselves “Freedom Fighters”.
Please enlighten us as to how she was supervised by Ukrainian collaborationist Volodymyr Kubijovych, a man she never met and died whilst exiled in France when she was 16 living in Edmonton.
She graduated from Harvard on an academic scholarship and became a Rhode Scholar graduating with a masters from Oxford. She’s fluent in 5 languages, we should be thankful for her and any other brilliant mind that sacrifices their career to become parliamentarians regardless of what political stripe they are. But you dare to tarnish her with the stench of antisemitism, careful not to call her one but smear the stench awfully close.
She’s striving to help Zelenskyy gain acceptance into NATO and helping arm the Ukraine in defence of Russia so the rest of the country doesn’t become another Crimea and that makes her a war monger and Putin, what a pacifist?
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You say she’s striving to help Zelensky gain acceptance into NATO as though that’s a good thing. It’s not. It’s deliberate sabre-rattling to set up missile silos and other US weaponry in Ukraine regions bordering Russia. What if a politician from China strove to help Russia place its weaponry in Mexico? From your perspective, it seems that Chinese politician would be a hero.
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