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The Daily Insight

Chrystia Freeland Parents: Meet Halyna Chomiak & Donald Freeland

Author

James Bradley

Published Feb 27, 2026

Chrystia Freeland is the daughter of Halyna Chomiak and Donald Freeland. Her father Donald was a farmer and lawyer and a member of the Liberal Party.

Chrystia’s Ukrainian mother, Halyna was also a lawyer and ran for the New Democratic Party in Edmonton Strathcona in the 1988 federal election.

Her paternal grandmother was a Scottish war bride. Freeland’s parents divorced when she was 9 years old, though she continued to live with both of them.

Political commentators have given Freeland the informal title, “Minister of Everything” an honorific previously used for powerful 20th-century Liberal Cabinet minister, CD Howe. Freeland was described in 2019 as one of the most influential Cabinet ministers of Trudeau’s premiership.