Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland has inherited a disastrous economy as she takes on her new duties as finance minister after Bill Morneau’s resignation.
Global’s David Akin looks at the challenges Freeland faces.
In a physically distant ceremony at Rideau Hall on Aug. 18, Freeland removed her face mask briefly to take the oath of office and become the country’s new minister of finance before replacing the mask to bump elbows with both Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Gov. General Julie Payette, also masked. She made history as Canada’s first female finance minister.
Canada is a country in the northern part of North America. It extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering 9.98 million square kilometres (3.85 million square miles), making it the world’s second-largest country by total area.
Its southern and western border with the United States, stretching 8,891 kilometres (5,525 mi), is the world’s longest bi-national land border. Canada’s capital is Ottawa, and its three largest metropolitan areas are Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver.
Various Indigenous peoples inhabited what is now Canada for thousands of years before European colonization. The Canada Act 1982, which severed the vestiges of legal dependence on the British Parliament. Canada is a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy in the Westminster tradition, with a monarch and a prime minister who serves as the chair of the Cabinet and head of government.
As a highly developed country, Canada has the seventeenth-highest nominal per-capita income globally as well as the thirteenth-highest ranking in the Human Development Index. Its advanced economy is the tenth-largest in the world, relying chiefly upon its abundant natural resources and well-developed international trade networks.
Justin Pierre James Trudeau PC MP is a Canadian politician who is the 23rd and current prime minister of Canada since November 2015 and the leader of the Liberal Party since April 2013.
