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New trade minister Chrystia Freeland brings some deep views to her new job that might transcend the usual partisanship that comes with taking on one of the federal government’s highest profile economic cabinet positions.

In 2012, just one year before she entered politics, Freeland published a book that looked at the gap between the world’s richest and poorest people, Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else. When she was first elected as an MP in a 2013 by-election in a Toronto riding, she made the battle against income inequality and the hollowing out of the middle-class her cause célèbre.

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Those positions may underpin her tenure in the trade portfolio. She has argued that free trade is a necessary step to improving middle class prosperity in Canada.

“Canada is a small country. The world economy is huge. And if we want our middle class to be prosperous — which is the core of our agenda — having trade deals with the world is absolutely essential,” she said in August 2014.