
After yesterday’s announcement that Canada’s ambassador to the United States, Kirsten Hillman, will leave her post in the new year after serving in the position since 2020, speculation has begun regarding her successor.
According to Global News, two well-placed sources say the new ambassador will be Mark Wiseman, a financier who is said to be a friend of Prime Minister Mark Carney. Wiseman’s resumé includes being the former chair of the Alberta Investment Management Corporation, a former manager at BlackRock, and the president and CEO of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.
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The Prime Minister’s Office would not comment on the possibility when asked by Global News.
In a statement posted to social media, Hillman called her tenure as ambassador “the greatest privilege of my professional life.”
Hillman emphasized in an interview with CTV News that leaving was her decision. “I spoke to the prime minister about this, and I said it’s time for me to start a new chapter,” she revealed. “He had asked me back in the spring to stay on for the transition of his government, and the transition to the new Trump administration. I agreed to do that, and I’m honoured to have done that.”
Former prime minister Justin Trudeau, who appointed Hillman, said on social media that Hillman is “a real patriot who has served Canadians proudly and effectively in the face of unprecedented challenges against our economy and our sovereignty.”
Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.