Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will name Dominic LeBlanc as Canada’s finance minister to replace Chrystia Freeland, who shocked the government with a scathing resignation letter on Monday morning.
LeBlanc will be sworn in this afternoon, according to a government official familiar with the matter who spoke on condition they not be named.
LeBlanc, 57, currently serves as public safety minister and has been overseeing Canada’s border security response after US President-elect Donald Trump threatened 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico if those countries failed to curb the movement of migrants and drugs across borders.
He’s a close friend and ally of Trudeau and has been in a number of key cabinet roles since the prime minister swept to power in 2015. When Trudeau flew down to meet Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort last month, he took LeBlanc with him.
The Canadian dollar tumbled after Freeland’s resignation, bounced back, then began to drop again in late afternoon trading. It was at C$1.4248 per US dollar as of 3:51 p.m. Ottawa time.
Freeland, a former journalist, had been finance minister since 2020 and held a number of senior cabinet posts before that. But she said she couldn’t carry on because she and Trudeau were at odds over fiscal policy and how to respond to Trump.
“Our country today faces a grave challenge,” Freeland wrote. “We need to take that threat extremely seriously. That means keeping our fiscal powder dry today, so we have the reserves we may need for a coming tariff war. That means eschewing costly political gimmicks, which we can ill afford and which make Canadians doubt that we recognize the gravity of the moment.”
The phrase “political gimmicks” is likely a reference to the government’s announcement last month that it plans to implement a two-month sales-tax holiday on certain items, such as toys and Christmas trees, and send C$250 ($175) checks to millions of Canadians. The tax holiday came into force, but so far the government doesn’t appear to have the necessary political support to pass the rebate checks in the House of Commons.
LeBlanc’s appointment will cool speculation that Trudeau is about to lure Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of Canada and Bank of England, into the government. Carney serves in a number of philanthropic and business roles, including as chair of Brookfield Asset Management and Bloomberg Inc.
