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By John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with [2]
Since Chrystia Freeland (lead image) was dismissed from her Canadian Cabinet ministry on September 16 [3], she has become the “Special Representative for the Reconstruction of Ukraine.” This is a camouflage uniform.
According to the official filing in parliament on November 5 [4] by the Privy Council Office (PCO) on behalf of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Freeland has no staff for her post, no office, no budget, no travel expenses, and a pay cut of $79,700. The Privy Council Office, reporting to the House of Commons, says it has “searched its financial records and did not find any costs, start-up or otherwise, related to the role of the Special Representative for the Reconstruction of Ukraine.”
As the longest-serving warfighter against Russia in Canadian government, Freeland is now a full-fledged foreign mercenary on the Ukraine battlefield.
On September 19, three days after Freeland’s dismissal, Garnett Genuis [5], an opposition Conservative Party MP from Alberta, tabled several questions in the House of Commons, directed at Prime Minister Carney to report what had been done with Freeland.
[6]Source: https://www.ourcommons.ca/written-questions/45-1/q-342/13724879?showQuestion=true§ion=all [4]
The questions were [4]: “With regard to the appointment of a Special Representative for the Reconstruction of Ukraine: (a) through which mechanism was the appointment made; (b) how many staff, including administrative support, will the government provide for the special representative, in total and broken down by position or responsibility; (c) where will the staff be based; (d) what is the projected annual budget for the office of the special representative, in total and broken down by type of projected expenditure; (e) what is the salary or remuneration range for this appointment; (f) what specific objectives and targets has the government provided to the special representative and what performance metrics will be used to assess whether the appointee is achieving these targets; and (g) what are the expected start-up costs for establishing this position, in total and broken down by type of cost?”
The answers were returned to the House on November 5 as Sessional Paper 8555-451-342. This House of Commons document came from the Privy Council Office (PCO); it had taken almost seven weeks to prepare the answer, clear it with Carney, and release. The PCO is an administrative unit reporting to the prime ministry [7].
[8]According to the PCO, Freeland’s new appointment had been made “pursuant to section 46 of the Parliament of Canada Act.” This provision – read it in full here [9] — means that Freeland has been given a demotion rank (parliamentary secretary), and also a temporary one lasting just twelve months. Because Freeland had told Carney in her letter of September 16 [10] that she was thinking to resign her Toronto seat in parliament [3], she was threatening Carney’s minority Liberal Party government with an uncertain by-election. Carney retaliated with a hidden threat in his appointment notice. If Freeland resigns her seat, Section 46 (3) of her appointment statute says [9] that she “ceases to hold the office of Parliamentary Secretary.” Her Ukraine job is Carney’s handcuffs holding her in her parliamentary seat.
The new disclosures from the PCO also reveal [4] “there will be no administrative support provided to the special representative.” There is also no money.
“The Privy Council Office has not received a budget letter issued by the Treasury Board for the Special Representative for the Reconstruction of Ukraine. While there is no formal budget, any relevant expenditures will be covered by departmental reference levels…There are no anticipated start-up costs for establishing this position. Parliamentary Secretaries are paid salaries in accordance with the Parliament of Canada Act and are not paid by the Privy Council Office. Non-salary expenditures are paid in accordance with the Policies for Ministers’ Offices which means that certain expenses such as travel could be paid by the Privy Council Office. The Privy Council Office searched its financial records and did not find any costs, start-up or otherwise, related [4] to the role of the Special Representative for the Reconstruction of Ukraine.
Asked for the salary or remuneration range for the appointment, the official answer is: “As is the case with all parliamentary secretaries, the salary for this appointment is $20,200.00 paid in addition to the salary for Members of the House of Commons, in accordance with section 61 of the Parliament of Canada Act.”
When Freeland was ousted from her last cabinet post as transport minister, she was receiving the regular cabinet minister bonus of C$99,900 bonus on top of her MP’s salary of C$209,800 MP salary. The PCO disclosure reveals, however, that this bonus had been cut to C$20,200 – a loss to Freeland’s pocket of C$79,700.
The recent travel outside Canada which Freeland reports on Twitter [11] and Instagram [12] – Greece, Italy, Kiev — is no longer paid for the Government in Ottawa. There is speculation among Canadian reporters that George Soros and his organisations [13], an early donor to Freeland’s career, may be contributing again.
[14]Blacklocks, a parliament news medium, was the first to report the PCO disclosure on November 7 [15] under the headline, “No Staff, No Budget, No Job”. The mainstream Canadian media, led by Freeland’s booster, Robert Fife (right), the Ottawa bureau chief of the Toronto Globe and Mail, have failed to report the disclosures – except for the Western Standard [16] of Alberta and other western province media.
According to the Vancouver City News, reporting on November 9 [17], Freeland is refusing to answer press questions. “The former journalist has not been interviewed by a Canadian news outlet since her appointment, despite multiple requests from The Canadian Press.”
While the Québec press has picked up the PCO story [18], the Globe and Mail’s coverage of Freeland stopped [19] in September after she lost her job.
On September 16 [3], Dances with Bears reported that Carney’s sacking of Freeland “was so rushed, there was no time for her to explain what the hurry was in her departure, nor for Carney to prepare what Freeland would be doing as his special envoy to the Ukraine without any staff or diplomatic rank.” That report documented Freeland’s efforts to top her grandfather, Mikhail Chomiak’s career as a spy and propagandist for the German Army in the Ukraine and Poland during World War II; he fled to Germany with the retreating army forces until he was engaged by a US Army’s military intelligence unit. Freeland’s mother [3] was born in a US Army hospital in occupied Germany.
[20]“We need Ukraine as much as it needs us” was Chomiak’s slogan. Freeland repeated it as the headline of an Op Ed piece published by the Financial Times on October 1 [21].
She was signalling that she has become the sales representative for the transfer of confiscated Russian Central Bank reserves to finance Ukrainian arms industries to export their materiel to the militaries of the NATO, including Canada. “The future of war is being invented there, and Kyiv can help us to bring that future to our own militaries and to our defence industries…we also need to start learning from the Ukrainians, both how to fight a 21st-century war, and how to invent, manufacture and then keep reinventing the weapons we need for this new way of war in real time…Just as Canada has championed freezing Russian assets, and using them as collateral for loans to Ukraine, we are now ready to work with our partners on this essential task…By helping Ukrainians to build a prosperous, sovereign and secure country for the long term, we will be investing in our own security, and our own prosperity [21].”
In her long-running war against Russia this is Freeland the phoenix rising from the ashes of the Ukrainian battlefield to enrich herself.