Chrystia Freeland has a lot on her CV. 

Kingslayer stands out, given her role in forcing former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s resignation. But so does her work in getting Canada’s trade agreement with the European Union over the last mile, and her stewardship of the new North American free-trade agreement. The latter has been a partial shield from President Donald Trump’s fusillade of import tariffs. RBC’s economics team estimates that the effective tariff rate on Canadian imports is 2.3 per cent compared with the global average of seven per cent. That deal with Europe will be central to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s plan to diversify Canadian exports.

Freeland’s record as finance minister was mixed, but historians will be impressed that she was the first woman to hold that job. Also, the economic benefits of the national child care program she introduced might one day cause bitter memories of missed deficit targets and the capital-gains-tax debacle to fade.

The thing all those jobs have in common is scale. Freeland’s career is a series of big-stage performances, including a journalism career that started amid the collapse of the Soviet Union and was followed by senior postings in London and New York, along with two books. 

In his memoir, Robert Lighthizer, the U.S. trade representative during the first Trump presidency, described Freeland as a “plucky Rhodes scholar and former journalist who once found her way onto a KGB watch list.” His description showed that when you think of Chrystia Freeland, the first thing you think about is the drama. 

That’s why her new job might require a different mindset. As Carney’s minister of transport and internal trade, after placing second to him in the race to replace Trudeau as Liberal leader, Freeland will be spending her time in provincial capitals, not global ones. Instead of conferring with G7 finance ministers, she’ll be wrangling her provincial counterparts over jurisdictional discrepancies, such as trucking standards and professional credentials. Fredericton isn’t Frankfurt, and Winnipeg isn’t Washington, D.C. 

“I totally disagree,” Freeland said when I asked if the new job would require some adjustment. “I find that very exciting and [my] experience really relevant.” 

Freeland went on to use the entirety of the 10 minutes she said she could spare Friday afternoon to talk about why she’s so excited and how her experience will inform her latest policy challenge: overcoming decades of inertia to make Canada’s internal market look more like the European Union, and less like a loose collection of 13 little fiefdoms. 

The former deputy prime minister described the economic opportunity as “huge” and the political alignment as precious. “The thing that I discovered in moving from being a writer to a political leader is that it is not always enough for an idea or a policy to be good,” she said. “You need the political window and the political moment.”

The eventual impact of creating something resembling a common market could be transformative. Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem was the latest heavyweight economist to endorse the push, telling reporters this week that “where we are now underlines, again, that there is a need for us to diversify our trade as well as develop our own internal market.” Earlier this month, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development reupped its call for freer trade between provinces and territories, saying that erasing non-tariff barriers could increase gross domestic product by four per cent over the long run. 

“In the face of this big shock, it’s time to walk the walk, rather than just talking the talk,” Álvaro Pereira, the OECD’s chief economist, said in an interview. “It’s time to get it done, really lowering inter-provincial barriers, working on recognition and credentials and trying to make the Canadian market more harmonized.”

Freeland’s challenge will be keeping up the momentum. The federal government tabled legislation on Friday that would, among other things, align federal standards with provincial ones, reducing at least one layer of the kind of bureaucratic obstruction that frustrates outfits such as the OECD. Various provinces also are rushing to pass legislation that would similarly recognize each other’s rules. 

But in many ways, that’s the easy part. Some economists think the excitement over interprovincial trade is overdone. Lobbyists will activate when they see things they dislike, and the pace will slow. It’s easy to imagine the political window closing without much being accomplished. Freeland, given her time as trade minister, will be ready. “The politics are challenging,” she said. “The barriers to internal trade, to labour mobility, to trucking, to housing—they’re not there because people were dumb. Each barrier was put in place for a reason.”

Freeland would prove her own point. I was allowed one last question before she had to get off the phone. I asked if she had a plan to tackle financial services, another thicket of requirements and fees that frustrate smaller companies, impede competition and deter international investment. She dodged the question, discussing instead the progress that she thinks can be made by focusing on trucking and housing. 

“What we want to do is move as quickly and as practically as we can to one Canadian economy,” she said.

Kevin Carmichael is The Logic’s economics columnist and editor-at-large. He has spent more than two decades covering economics, business and finance for outlets including Bloomberg News, The Globe and Mail and the Financial Post, where he also served as editor-in-chief.