If you squint and use a little imagination, you can see the pile of brains sitting outside the Cabinet Room on Parliament Hill. This pile has lain there for nearly a decade, heavy with the organs of the men and women who hold some of the most powerful positions in the Canadian government. These ministers were expected to remove them from their skulls before entering the room so that the empty space in their heads could be filled with nonsense straight from the Prime Minister’s office.

On leaving the room, for example, a brainless Finance Minister Bill Morneau would have to deliver an enthusiastic defense of his government’s decision to reverse the planned increase in pension eligibility from 65 to 67, even though before he entered he had literally written a book about politics discussed why undoing that was a bad idea. A brainless Minister of Public Safety, Marco Mendicino, would say that the Conservatives are spreading “disinformation” by claiming that a change to their gun control laws bans the use of guns for hunting, even though the change clearly aims to do just that.

But no minister carried out her post-lobotomy duties as confidently, as skillfully and as loyally as Chrystia Freeland. She was recruited for her intelligence and reputation as a Harvard-educated Rhodes Scholar with a successful career as a journalist and author. She won the Toronto Center byelection in 2013 and generously donated her credibility to the third-place Liberal Party, newly led by a man with a famous last name and seemingly not much else. Ms. Freeland brought seriousness, real-world experience and wisdom. And then she came across this pile outside the cabinet room where she would store her brains for the next nine years.

As minister of international trade, she dutifully pursued a trade deal with China—one that Canada hoped would enshrine in law “progressive” elements on issues like feminism and climate change—that arrogantly assumed that Canada could somehow tame China , which creates membership in the World Trade Organization, for example, would not be possible. As finance minister, she introduced a series of measures ostensibly aimed at improving housing affordability The In practice, this would only stimulate demand and worsen supply-side problems. It caused record spending, sluggish growth and endless deficits. “Investing in our economic performance is fiscally responsible,” Ms. Freeland said in 2023. The brain that decayed outside the Cabinet Room knew better, but Ms. Freeland’s mouth never deviated from the PMO-approved script.

Mr. Trudeau’s deputy could be reliably called upon to defend the government in any scandal. Ms. Freeland said she had 100 percent confidence in Mr. Trudeau following the SNC-Lavalin scandal, in which the prime minister was accused by Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould of trying to seek a preferential outcome for the company for political reasons. Ms. Freeland defended the government’s use of the Emergencies Act to deal with the Freedom Convoy in 2022 and attempted to make the tenuous argument in the subsequent investigation that an economic threat constituted a national security threat under the CSIS Act. And she toiled in the political muck by posting a distorted video of then-Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole on Twitter during the 2021 election that suggested he would privatize Canada’s health care system.

And yet, for all her loyalty, submissiveness and commitment, Ms Freeland’s tenure in the Cabinet ended rather humiliatingly and tragically. The finance minister reportedly disagreed with the government’s crazy plans for temporary GST relief and $250 bribe checks for Canadians, and because of that penultimate sin – disloyalty – she was told by Mr. Trudeau that she was no longer could serve as finance minister. After nearly a decade as a good soldier, Ms. Freeland has learned a painful lesson: Loyalty only matters to this prime minister if it is unyielding and unbroken.

Before leaving her office, Ms. Freeland retrieved her brain and stuffed it back into her skull, as if to prove to Canadians that it had indeed existed all along. In a letter announcing her resignation, she noted that the danger posed by new President Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs posed a serious threat that required an equally serious response. “That means foregoing costly political games that we can ill afford and that make Canadians doubt that we understand the seriousness of the situation,” she wrote. Ms. Freeland too chimed in a few more times, noting that Canadians “know when we’re working for them, and they also know when we’re focusing on ourselves,” and suggested that the prime minister was “in good faith “and humbly” must work with Canada’s prime ministers. The Freeland who betrayed the man they so faithfully supported is a Freeland Canadian they had hoped to see all along. But this PMO would never have allowed it. The brains sit outside the cabinet room for a reason.