Chrystia Freeland is quitting Prime Minister Mark Carney's cabinet and taking on a new role as Canada's special envoy for the reconstruction of Ukraine.

Freeland announced her resignation as transport minister on Tuesday. She said she will remain in the House of Commons as an MP for her Toronto riding of University-Rosedale but will not seek re-election.

She left Tuesday's regular cabinet meeting smiling and talking with Carney as they walked past TV cameras. Neither stopped to answer questions from reporters stationed outside the room.

Instead, the news came out through media leaks before the cabinet meeting, and social media posts about an hour afterward.

"A great strength of democracy is that no one holds political office in perpetuity. After twelve fulfilling years in public life, I know that now is the right time for me to make way for others and to seek fresh changes for myself," Freeland said in a letter posted to social media.

She said she's leaving politics with "gratitude and a little sadness" as she looks to the next chapter in her life.

Carney announced her appointment in a letter posted online.

"As a former G7 minister of finance, foreign affairs, and international trade with deep relationships and understanding of Ukraine and its economy, Chrystia is truly uniquely positioned for this timely and essential work towards a better future for Ukrainians and peace in Europe," Carney said in the letter.

Freeland has been one of the most prominent government advocates for Ukraine on the world stage.

Bill Browder, an American-born financier and leading advocate for sanctions on Russia, said Freeland was the main proponent of the idea of seizing and forfeiting Russia's financial holdings in western countries.

He said she raised the idea with fellow finance ministers and pushed back when they expressed doubts about its legality.

"She was the one who came up with the idea of freezing Russia's central bank reserves," he told a Tuesday press conference on Parliament Hill about sanctions.

"She had the legal analysis prepared and she was the one who convinced all of the allies that this was the right thing to do. And as a result, $300 billion worth of Russian central bank reserves have been frozen."

Freeland attended a conference in Kyiv this past weekend about how to end the full-scale war Russia launched in 2014.

She has deep connections to Ukraine and was raised by a Ukrainian-Canadian mother who was born in a refugee camp after the Second World War.

Freeland studied Russian history at Harvard University and Slavonic Studies at the University of Oxford. She was active in the Ukrainian independence movement during her time as an exchange student in Kyiv, leading the Soviet press to denounce her by name.

Freeland worked as a journalist in Kyiv and Moscow for the Financial Times, the Economist and the Washington Post. She speaks both Ukrainian and Russian with ease.

She returned to Canada and worked as an editor for The Globe and Mail in the late 1990s, and eventually for Reuters. She authored books about income disparity and the rise of oligarchs in post-Soviet countries.

Freeland was elected to the House of Commons in 2013, two years before Trudeau took office with a majority in 2015. 

During that election, she drummed up media attention by attempting to enter a men-only club where a Conservative cabinet minister was set to speak.

She entered cabinet immediately after the 2015 election, first in trade and then in foreign affairs. There she helped to save an endangered trade deal with the European Union and steered Canada through the renegotiation of the continental trade pact during President Donald Trump's first term in the White House.

In 2018, Saudi Arabia expelled Canada’s ambassador after Freeland and her department tweeted that the country must release arrested women’s rights activists.

A central figure in Liberal politics for a decade, she became former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s right hand in late 2019 when he named her deputy prime minister. She became the first woman to be appointed federal finance minister in 2020 and oversaw historic emergency spending during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Her term as minister of intergovernmental affairs involved federal responses to the rise of Alberta separatism, and she managed to form friendships across party lines, particularly with Ontario Premier Doug Ford.

On the day she was set to present a major fiscal update in December 2024, Freeland instead resigned and publicly attacked Trudeau over what she described as expensive political gimmicks.

The move is widely seen as the precipitating event that led to Trudeau's resignation on Jan. 6.

Freeland sought the party's top post in the subsequent leadership race earlier this year, presenting herself as the best person to stand up to Trump.

She ultimately lost to Carney in March, who won a resounding mandate from party grassroots. She served for months as transport and internal trade minister, tasked with breaking down internal trade barriers.

In his letter, Carney praised her "raw intelligence and principled leadership" and credited her with helping Canada navigate a global pandemic and major trade negotiations.

Carney was just one of several political figures who thanked Freeland for her years of public service on Tuesday.

"She was a key contact for me with the federal government and a key advocate for British Columbians, and I'm grateful for her public service and the sacrifice that she and her family made in order to be able to do that work," B.C. Premier David Eby said at an unrelated press conference in Vancouver, moments before Freeland's decision was officially announced.

In Toronto Tuesday, Ford told reporters that Freeland is a close friend he talks with almost every day. In a social media post, Ford wished her the best.

– Kyle Duggan and Dylan Robertson, The Canadian Press 

With files from Allison Jones in Toronto.