Editor:
At the Mad Park Bistro town hall meeting last Friday, I asked our member of Parliament why Trudeau replaced veteran minister Stéphane Dion with hardliner Chrystia Freeland. Ms. Freeland may be the least suited for the job of building Canadian rapport with the new U.S. president and de-escalating tensions with Russia.
There were suggestions that Freeland would be good at dealing with the Trump administration because she’s been trade minister and has spent time in Russia. Trump says he wants to end illegal sanctions and begin rapprochement with Putin. If he succeeds, it’ll free up vast sums for infrastructure and uplift, which would otherwise be wasted on an already bloated, aggressive military budget. Freeland is an anti-Putin sabre rattler and a booster of the neo-fascist coup leaders who toppled Ukraine’s democratically elected government during the Sochi Olympics and just before an election (which they obviously did not expect to win). She blamed the ensuing chaos on Putin. She has been banned from entering Russia.
In a globalresearch.ca article, Canadian journalist and educator Jim Miles concluded: “Freeland is the perfect Trudeau foil to try and avoid rapprochement with Russia as per the U.S. anti-Trump establishment.”
Our prime minister should reconsider his appointing a Russophobe as top diplomat. We hope Freeland will mellow; otherwise, Mr. Trudeau may need to find someone more apt to succeed at this most important job of building world peace.
Roger Lagassé, S.C. Peace Group
