Dec. 22 (UPI) — Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Monday announced business executive Mark Wiseman will become ambassador to the United States.
Wiseman, 55, is president and chief executive officer of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and chairman of the board of directors of the Alberta Investment Management Corporation.
He will replace Kristen Hillman on Feb. 15, the Canadian prime minister’s office said in the announcement.
He is a close friend of Carney, CBC reported.
Wiseman was born in the border town of Niagara Falls, Ontario, and studied law at Yale University in Connecticut.
“Mark Wiseman brings immense experience, contacts, and deep commitment at this crucial time of transformation of our relationship with the United States,” Carney said in a statement. “As a core member of our negotiating team, he will help advance the interests of Canadian workers, businesses, and institutions, while building opportunities for both Canada and the United States.”
He will seek to advance Canada-U.S. priorities, “including secure borders, a strengthened trade and investment relationship, and cooperation between Canada and the United States on global challenges,” according to a news release from the prime minister’s office.
Wiseman’s appointment comes as relations are tense with U.S. President Donald Trump, including tariffs he levied on the neighbor to the north. They include 35% duties on most goods, but with a lower 10% rate for Canadian energy products and potash.
Trump called off trade talks aimed at easing tariffs after Ontario’s provincial government paid for an anti-tariff ad broadcast in the United States between a Toronto Blue Jays and the Los Angeles Dodgers game during the World Series in October. It quoted former President Ronald Reagan.
Trump said he would impose an extra 10% tariff on Canadian goods.
Carney apologized for the ad, though the federal government was not responsible for it.
Pete Hoekstra, the U.S. ambassador to Canada since April, also has criticized Canada, saying: “You do not come into America and start running political ads, government-funded political ads, and expect that there will be no consequences or reaction from the United States of America and the Trump administration.”
Wiseman will lead review talks of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement in January. It was implemented in July 2020 for a 16-year term, replacing the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Trump’s trade representative, Jamieson Greer, told Congress that CUSMA has been “successful to a certain degree,” but changes are needed before Trump agrees to extend it for 16 years or revert to yearly reviews.
Canada prefers a long-term extension.
More than $3.5 billion of goods and services cross the Canada-U.S. border every day.
More than 85% of Canada-U.S. products are tariff-free.
When Carney was sworn in earlier this year, he named Wiseman to the Prime Minister’s Council on Canada-U.S. Relations, a body first created by former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as Trump was about to be sworn in as president for the second time in January.
Wiseman has been criticized for opposing the supply management system, mainly the dairy sector, but said the policy is safe when he is the ambassador.
Wiseman has said it benefits a “group of settled players,” impedes innovation and keeps “prices artificially high for Canadian consumers, including in the dairy industry.
Pascal Paradis, a member of Quebec’s National Assembly, said at a news conference last month in Quebec City: “The Parti Québécois will never accept the nomination of Mark Wiseman as Canada’s ambassador to the U.S. Why? Because Mark Wiseman is not a friend of the Quebec nation.”
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, a conservative, worked with Wiseman when he was the head of Alberta Investment Management Corporation, a Crown corporation that invests tens of billions of dollars worth of funds from the province’s oil resources and public pension plans.