Then Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland rises in the House of Commons on June 11, 2024 (Screen shot, ParlVU).
Prime Minister Mark Carney says the reason he has not asked Liberal MP Chrystia Freeland to resign her seat is not because the Liberals are in a minority government.
Carney was speaking to reporters in Paris on Jan. 6 on the margins of a meeting of the “Coalition of Willing” to discuss terms of a peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia.
The prime minister was asked to comment on Freeland’s new role as economic development adviser for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The appointment, announced early on Jan. 5 by Zelenskyy, was confirmed later the same day by Freeland.
Freeland said she would be leaving her role as Carney’s special representative for the reconstruction of Ukraine, and resign her House of Commons seat in the “coming weeks.”
When Carney was asked by reporters if he didn’t ask Freeland to resign her seat because the Liberals have a minority government, he responded, “No, absolutely not.”
The Liberals have made efforts in recent weeks to reach a majority by attracting defectors from the Opposition Conservatives. Two Tory MPs have joined Liberal ranks, bringing Carney’s government one seat shy of a majority.
Losing Freeland, and potentially other veteran Liberal MPs rumoured to be slated for diplomatic appointments, would at least temporarily bring the Liberal Party further away from the sought-after majority.
Carney said that Freeland came to believe that she would be more useful to the reconstruction of Ukraine working as a direct adviser to Zelenskyy as she was retiring from Parliament.
“My judgment was that taking that role would be consistent with resigning as an MP, and I welcomed her doing that,” Carney said.
Freeland had resigned from cabinet on Sept. 16, 2025, and was appointed the same day as special envoy for Ukraine. She said at the time she would not seek re-election in her Toronto riding of University-Rosedale, but didn’t provide a timeline on when she planned to step down.
In her Jan. 5 statement on her new role, Freeland said Ukraine is at the “forefront of today’s global fight for democracy” and that she welcomes the opportunity to contribute on an “unpaid basis” as an adviser to Zelenskyy.
Zelenskyy said he has appointed Freeland as his adviser due to her being “highly skilled” in economic development and because of her “extensive experience in attracting investment and implementing economic transformations.”
The move comes as Zelenskyy is replacing and shuffling his top officials, following the resignation of his chief of staff in late November amid anti-corruption investigations.
Freeland’s last cabinet role was minister of transport and internal trade. Under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau she had served as deputy prime minister and finance minister.
Freeland left Trudeau’s cabinet in December 2024, making her resignation letter public and setting in motion Trudeau’s eventual resignation.
Freeland ran for the Liberal leadership to replace Trudeau but lost by a large margin to her long-time friend Mark Carney.
Carney appointed Freeland in his first and second cabinet but she quit on the second day of the fall House sitting and kept a low profile in the following weeks.
Opposition parties are now calling for Freeland to leave her House seat immediately.
Tory MP Michael Chong said Freeland cannot be adviser to a foreign government while being a sitting MP. “She must do one or the other,” he said before Freeland had announced her planned resignation.
Interim NDP Leader Don Davies said Freeland “cannot serve Canada and another country at the same time.”
“Taxpayers should not be paying for an absent MP [especially] one working for a foreign government. She must resign as MP immediately,” Davies said in an X post after Freeland said she would resign in the “coming weeks.”
After Freeland officially resigns her seat, the prime minister will announce the date of a byelection in University-Rosedale, which Freeland easily won in the April 2025 election.
Carney said on Jan. 6 there will be a “few” byelections coming up, without elaborating.
Alberta Tory MP Matt Jeneroux is expected to leave his seat in the coming months. Jeneroux had made the announcement shortly after the first Tory defector Chris d’Entremont had joined the Liberals in November.
Liberal MPs and former Trudeau cabinet ministers Bill Blair and Jonathan Wilkinson have been rumoured to be waiting for diplomatic postings in Europe.
Noé Chartier is a senior reporter with the Canadian edition of The Epoch Times. Twitter: @NChartierET