Who is finance minister Dominic LeBlanc? Meet Trudeau’s loyal soldier

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Dominic LeBlanc is once again proving he is a good soldier, even as his army seems demoralized and in disarray. That might come from his own deep political pedigree and his long, personal relationship with the prime minister.

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When then-public safety minister Marco Mendicino was struggling last year, LeBlanc was willingly pushed into the breach to replace him. Now, facing an even bigger crisis of a larger void — Monday’s abrupt resignation of Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland — Trudeau again turned to his loyal soldier to jump into the line of fire.

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LeBlanc’s promotion to the finance portfolio came two days after his 57th birthday.

LeBlanc’s relationship with Trudeau, and their mutual relationships to Ottawa’s corridors of power, are generational.

When Dominic LeBlanc was born in 1967, his father, Roméo LeBlanc, was press secretary to then-prime minister Lester B. Pearson. Roméo LeBlanc, went on to become fisheries minister under Trudeau’s father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, when he was prime minister.

Their families have been close for decades, and the current iteration of the Trudeau-LeBlanc bloc particularly so.

LeBlanc, four years older than the prime minister, even babysat Justin Trudeau and his siblings in their youth.

Roméo LeBlanc went on to serve as a senator and as the first Acadian governor general.

With that lineage, LeBlanc has always been in a political environment.

He studied political science at the University of Toronto, law at the University of New Brunswick, and then obtained a Master of Laws degree at Harvard Law School, a U.S. Ivy League school.

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In between, he had a summer job as chauffeur for then-prime minister Jean Chrétien before becoming his aide.

He then set out on his own career as an elected public official. He lost his first election in the New Brunswick riding of Beauséjour to the NDP in 1997, but won in 2000 and still sits as the Member of Parliament for Beauséjour.

In 2008, he ran for the Liberal Party leadership to replace Stéphane Dion, but eventually dropped out to support the eventual winner, Michael Ignatieff. Ignatieff’s time as leader was unsuccessful. In the 2011 general election he lost his own seat and resigned as leader.

LeBlanc did not seek to replace Ignatieff as many expected, at least not officially, and Ignatieff’s downfall set the stage for Trudeau’s rise and the subsequent renewal of the Liberal Party. LeBlanc supported Trudeau’s bid for leader rather than seek it himself.

LeBlanc then began his long role as a soldier in Trudeau’s government, first as House leader, and then serving in several portfolios in Trudeau’s cabinet.

In 2019, when he was intergovernmental affairs minister, LeBlanc quit cabinet while he was treated for non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a rare cancer. He had previously been diagnosed with lymphocytic lymphoma in 2017, and later announced that his cancer was in remission.

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He credited a stem cell donation from a young German volunteer in 2020 for saving his life.

Trudeau referred to LeBlanc as “a close friend,” and two weeks after LeBlanc’s discharge from hospital, Trudeau welcomed him back into cabinet. What would the prime minister have done without him?

LeBlanc is fluently bilingual, convivial and gregarious. He has often been praised for his ability to work constructively with opposition party officials, with dissidents within his party’s ranks, and with provincial leaders.

Now, more than ever, he is regarded as Trudeau’s trusted and loyal soldier, taking on the crucial and high-profile finance job, while still retaining the important government roles of intergovernmental affairs and border security.

These are high-profile, high-tension portfolios for Canada as Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House as U.S. president.

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