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Ottawa may name new circumpolar envoy

Anawak’s old job likely to be filled by existing ambassador

JANE GEORGE

The position of “circumpolar ambassador” is now history within the Department of Foreign Affairs, but the federal cabinet may eventually name someone to hold that job, likely someone who is already doing the job of ambassador somewhere else.

That’s the latest in a series of mixed messages emanating from the office of Peter MacKay, the minister of Foreign Affairs, since his office dumped Canada’s ambassador to the Arctic, Jack Iyerak Anawak, and said it wouldn’t be filling the position after his appointment ended Sept. 22.

Circumpolar affairs would become part of the “bureaucratic, day-to-day running of the department,” Dan Dugas, a spokesperson for MacKay, told Nunatsiaq News.

As for MacKay, when asked about the future of the circumpolar ambassador’s position, he told reporters “we didn’t feel we were getting good value for money from that position.”

But last week, Dugas said he had made a mistake, that Anawak as the ambassador of circumpolar affairs and Karen Kraft Sloan as the ambassador of the environment had been let go, but that their positions would be filled.

“These are important positions of ambassadors, both environment and circumpolar,” Dugas told CBC news.

This week, the Foreign Affairs department had flipped to a variation on its original position, opening the door to future appointments, but not to a new circumpolar ambassador.

Dugas told Nunatsiaq News that “the duties and responsibility of the ambassador are to be assumed by senior, high-ranking bureaucrats and Canada will continue to be represented at all venues, as before. Cabinet is responsible for naming an individual as ambassador and when it does, it will announce it.”

MacKay told Nunavut’s MP, Nancy Karetak-Lindell, that his department was looking at different options, including the idea that the role of circumpolar ambassador would be performed by an existing ambassador to a circumpolar nation, as was the case when Mary Simon served as ambassador to Denmark and circumpolar ambassador.

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