Article content continued

For those of you who are concerned about Canada’s tenuous place in a world increasingly dominated by plutocrats, autocrats and theocrats, it’s not exactly welcome news

The member of Parliament for Saint-Maurice-Champlain since 2015, Champagne is a protégé of former Liberal prime minister Jean Chrétien, “the little guy from Shawinigan” who embarked upon a lucrative sinecure in China as an advocate, corporate consultant and dealmaker immediately after resigning as prime minister in the wake of the Adscam scandal in Quebec in 2003. In Canada, Chrétien has served tirelessly as a pro-Beijing busybody ever since.

A decade ago, when Champagne first publicly mused about putting his corporate career to one side and taking up federal politics, he cited Chrétien as his inspiration. At the time, he’d just been named a “young global leader” by the World Economic Forum, the blue-chip global celebrity circuit that runs the annual Davos extravaganza in Switzerland.

Back then, Champagne was settling into his post as “strategic development director” with Amec PLC in London after a decade with ABB Ltd. in Zurich.

The not intentionally ironic headline that appeared on a 2009 profile of Champagne in the Globe and Mail: Another little guy from Shawinigan.

Photo by Justin Tang/The Canadian Press

After a couple of years as parliamentary secretary to the minister of finance and 18 months as minister for international trade, Champagne went on to serve in an equally uneventful capacity, following the July 2018 cabinet shuffle, as minister of infrastructure and communities.

Freeland has been moved to a beefed-up intergovernmental affairs department in the hopes that she might bring some of her stature, her skills and Alberta background to bear on the deep political divisions exposed by last month’s federal election results. So she’ll be busy with that, and with a new role as deputy prime minister, which is no small thing.