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Deputy prime minister, the new cabinet role resurrected from political history for Chrystia Freeland, has traditionally been offered by prime ministers as they get on in years and build up a little political mud on their boots.

In Canada, it has often been held by a Westerner, with one notable Cape Bretoner, and under the Liberal Jean Chrétien, a series of Ontarians: Sheila Copps, Herb Gray and John Manley.

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There is a longer history of the position in Britain, but the same pattern of a leader enjoying a few years alone in the big chair before inviting someone to occupy it in their absence, or take questions in the House in their place, as in the governments of Harold Macmillan, Margaret Thatcher and John Major.

In Canada, the role was created in 1977 by Pierre Trudeau for the ultra-long-serving minister Allan J. MacEachen of Nova Scotia, after Trudeau had been in office for nearly a decade.

Brian Mulroney always had one, but he switched after a couple of years from an aggressive lieutenant in Erik Nielsen, Yukon MP and brother of actor Leslie, to the more genial Albertan Don Mazankowski, whose public handling of free trade negotiations and eventually the finance portfolio allowed Mulroney to withdraw a little from the daily fray.