Freeland’s book reveals Chrétien’s power play, crying in cabinet and Trudeau’s lecture about using the word ‘crazy’

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Six days later, on Dec. 8, 2024, Trudeau invited her to his home at Rideau Cottage.

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“It was probably the longest time I have spent alone with him,” she wrote.

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Freeland said they drank glasses of water and Trudeau mused about his determination to lead the Liberals into the next election. He then made a surprising statement.

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“At one point, apropos of nothing, he told me he believed that one day I would become prime minister, and that I would do a good job,” she wrote.

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Later that week, Trudeau and his team removed $12 billion in spending cuts she had pushed for in the fall economic statement. The Globe and Mail also reported that Trudeau was again trying to convince Mark Carney to replace her as finance minister.

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On Dec. 13, 2024, Trudeau and Freeland had their infamous one-on-one Zoom call.

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Trudeau said she would be shuffled out of the finance portfolio the day after presenting the fall economic statement. When she asked who would replace her, Trudeau said with a “half-proud, half-defiant smile” that it would be Carney.

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“The Zoom call with Trudeau had taught me that I simply couldn’t trust the PM — and that he had decided not to trust me. I had to leave.”

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Trudeau corrected female minister for referring to something as “crazy”

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Trudeau took a lot of heat for correcting a woman who used the word “mankind” instead of “peoplekind” in a town hall meeting in 2018 — but it turns out cabinet ministers also had to mind their language in private, according to Freeland.

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In one cabinet meeting, Trudeau apparently took issue with “a very progressive female colleague” casually referring to something as “crazy.”

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“That earned her a long, harsh public scolding from Trudeau, who informed her that using ‘crazy’ as a derogatory adjective was insulting to people with mental health issues,” wrote Freeland.

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Trudeau suggested they instead use the word “bananas” which was less offensive.

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Freeland said that while she has always bristled at accusations of “wokeness” and “political correctness,” she said that “linguistic-purity tests” can also be off-putting to regular people who struggle with which words are okay or not to use.

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“And they can give people the sense — and rightly so — that their leaders are more focused on the performance of virtue than on actually improving people’s lives.”

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There was some crying in cabinet — and sometimes some bullying too

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“Crying was routine at cabinet meetings. There were always boxes of Kleenex on hand, and really sad colleagues would sometimes get a hug from the PM,” Freeland wrote.

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Yet what troubled her the most about the crying and the lectures “was that it sometimes went along with what seemed like bullying,” she added.

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Freeland did not go into detail about the alleged bullying but said one of Trudeau’s “favourite homilies” to cabinet and caucus was talking about the necessity of eating “shit sandwiches” from time to time.

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Former prime minister Justin Trudeau and former foreign affairs minister Chrystia Freeland at a news conference in 2018. Photo by PATRICK DOYLE/AFP via Getty Images

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He would also instruct his ministers to stay on message until they “wanted to vomit a little bit in our mouth.”

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“By the time he stepped down, PM Trudeau had been so thoroughly caricatured as a woke poser that it was easy to forget that one of the things that had captivated Canadians when he first burst onto the scene was his macho charisma,” she wrote.

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Freeland referred to one of his early breakthrough moments as the charity boxing match against Senator Patrick Brazeau, a member of the Algonquin Nation.