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Has Chrystia Freeland given up hope of a renegotiated NAFTA deal and resolved instead to use opposition to Donald Trump in Canada to ramp up domestic support for the Liberals ahead of next year’s general election?

How else to explain her appearance at Monday’s Women in the World summit in Toronto, on a panel entitled Taking on the Tyrant?

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Freeland continues to pay lip-service to the prospect of a deal — that it can be done, with good will and flexibility on all sides.

But how much good will is the notoriously ill-willed Trump likely to extend once he is informed that Canada’s global affairs minister sat on a stage while a video played comparing him to a rogue’s gallery of autocrats including Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad?

Photo by AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster

All these leaders, claimed the video that opened the panel, use “fear, racism, corruption, anti-immigrant sentiment and misinformation to crack down on a free press, rule of law and political freedom to undermine democracy and consolidate power.”

Reasonable people can debate Trump’s foibles and shortcomings, particularly with regard to immigration and a free press, but Bashar al-Assad he is not.

For Freeland to tacitly endorse the comparison, the day before she sat across the table from Trump’s trade representative negotiating a deal crucial to this country’s national interest, was grossly irresponsible.