Chrystia Freeland gets seat at Ottawa cabinet table

Chrystia Freeland (photo) has made the leap from Reuters journalist to cabinet minister in just two easy bounds.

The former managing director and editor of consumer news based in New York was appointed Canada’s minister of international trade in the newly-elected government of Justin Trudeau announced this week.

Freeland quit Reuters in July 2013 and was elected a Liberal party member of parliament in a Toronto by-election four months later.

She said her goal as international trade minister is to "make Canada a winner in the international economy”.

A former Moscow bureau chief for the Financial Times, she is one of 13 Canadian politicians banned from Russia by President Vladimir Putin.

Her book Sale of the Century: The Inside Story of the Second Russian Revolution was published in 2000. Another book, Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else, was published in 2012. ■