This “review” is hilarious.

The review is hard to swallow on multiple accounts. I don’t like book reviews, positive or negative. A ture book review should just give objective review of the book as if the review was a map of the book.

I am not going to talk about the book here, but the review because if the author of the piece thought he was making Freeland look good, he definitely wasn’t:

Then there’s the other dodgy boyfriend whose shadow looms large over this account: Justin Trudeau. It was Trudeau who lured Freeland into politics, and Trudeau who made her a star in his government, eventually finance minister and deputy prime minister.

There’s a lot in this book, but the most intriguing part for me is the way she deals with her relationship with the boyfriend she finally dumped. To cut to the chase, Trudeau does not come out looking good.

Freeland does insist that “history will be kind to Justin Trudeau,” and devotes a fat paragraph to his accomplishments — the national child benefit that lifted hundreds of thousands out of poverty, getting Canada through COVID, and, crucially, refusing to cave to Trump when NAFTA was being renegotiated. “Love him or loathe him,” she writes about Trudeau’s decision not to sign a trade agreement in Asia when Canada wasn’t getting what it needed, “you could not deny that he was a leader with balls.”

But there’s a lot more about Trudeau’s flaws as a leader. 

How about Freeland’s flaws as MP? Justin Trudeau was a useful idiot for the Liberal Party who were not used to being in third place and not as the Government Party. The geezers and wonks knew they needed a Luxury Brand Politician to get back power from the cagey Stephen Harper, and that dandy Justin Trudeau, who grew up in the media spotlight, was the perfect face.

Justin didn’t have political experience, and you don’t get it just because dad was prime minister. You don’t go to a surgeon’s kid for an operation or a lawyer or accountant’s kid to get you out of a jam. You go to the person who has experience.

Justin didn’t have political experience. Neither did Freeland. And it showed.

And now, it seems, Freeland’s book was a way to launder her own reputation as she throws him under a bus. No one in their right mind would have recruited Freeland and then let her run the shop, so to speak. Trudeau did.

And then there is this passage:

Freeland now says she left Trudeau’s cabinet a year “or maybe two years” too late. For the last year she was constantly being asked if she still supported “a PM who was openly auditioning my replacement.” Trudeau was trying to recruit Mark Carney to his team and didn’t give Freeland public or private guarantees that her job was safe. Nevertheless, she couldn’t tear herself away from this particular unreliable boyfriend.

Jean Chrétien, she writes, was one of those urging her to resign, knowing that would force Trudeau out. Loyalty to her boss was fine, he told her, but she had “a responsibility to the Liberal party and to Canada.”

This is such a Mary Sue narrative, with extra stealth daggers embedded in it: she had to save Canada, and even Liberal Patriarch Jean Chretien wanted Justin to leave sooner.

In other words, to be a Liberal is to stab your benefactors in the back and then wonder why you can’t recruit quality candidates with scruples.

And then there was this piece of malarky:

Certainly, there’s a lot more to “Unreliable Boyfriend” than Freeland’s breakup with Trudeau. It’s largely about dealing with Trump’s America and coming to terms with the fact that Canada can no longer nestle in the strong arms of its neighbour. She learned, as we all have, that the U.S. now operates on the simple but brutal principle of “I am big and you are small. So I am right and you are wrong.”

Melodrama, pure and simple. Donald Trump is about to lose control of the Senate and House in three weeks. Countless Democrat and Republican politicians, including those at the state level, have made it amply clear that they respect and cherish Canada, and this storm is temporary at best.

Running to the EU is not the smartest of tactics as they are, as we speak, country by country, taking a hard turn to the right. The US’s pendulum is swinging away from the goobers of MAGA. Patience is a virtue. Yes, Canada shouldn’t be so dependent on the US for all its trade, but to get your panties in a knot over a lame duck president whose popularity is plummeting is emotionally immature. Obviously, Freeland is incapable of playing the long game.

The advertorial ends with this kissy-faced fanboyaganda:

Most importantly, she knows what she stands for — and isn’t afraid to defend it with vigour and eloquence.

Too bad the Toronto Star doesn’t know what she is actually stood for. They read the book all wrong.