Mark Wiseman, pictured in November, 2017, will succeed Kirsten Hillman as Canada's ambassador to the U.S.MIKE SEGAR/Reuters
Prime Minister Mark Carney formally announced that Canada’s next ambassador to the United States will be Mark Wiseman, a plain-spoken dealmaker with deep business relationships who will head to Washington with the goal of securing trade peace.
Mr. Wiseman will assume the role on Feb. 15 and be key to the government’s efforts to advance Canada-U.S. priorities, Mr. Carney said in a statement Monday.
The appointment puts Mr. Wiseman, a former lawyer and pension-fund executive who has stewarded money for some of the world’s largest investors, in a position of influence as Canada seeks to restore fraught trade and defence ties with the U.S.
Mr. Wiseman, a close friend of Mr. Carney, replaces Kirsten Hillman, who had served in Washington since 2017, including the past six years as ambassador. The Globe and Mail has previously reported that his appointment was approved by Mr. Carney’s cabinet earlier this month.
He will step into the role during the early stages of a planned review of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the continental trade deal that continues to shield most Canadian exports from U.S. President Donald Trump’s punitive tariffs. Mr. Carney has said the USMCA talks are now likely to also encompass tariffs that Mr. Trump has applied regardless of the pact, including levies on steel, aluminum and autos.
The new ambassador’s mandate will also include helping the government boost foreign direct investment in Canada.
“Mark Wiseman brings immense experience, contacts, and deep commitment at this crucial time of transformation of our relationship with the United States,” Mr. Carney said.
“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.”
Mr. Wiseman declined to comment through a spokesperson.
Former colleagues lauded him as a strong pick for the post, though opposition politicians criticized the appointment on the basis of his past comments on supply management and his positions on immigration.
He has not served in government or diplomatic service, but several of his past jobs had a public-sector link, including his stint from 2012 to 2016 as chief executive officer of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, which manages $778-billion for working Canadians and retirees.
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His success as an investor helped Mr. Wiseman build decades-long relationships with top U.S. business leaders. That should give him credibility in influential networks close to top Trump administration officials, such as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
Mr. Wiseman is close with senior American executives such as BlackRock chairman and CEO Larry Fink and KKR & Co. Inc. co-executive chairman Henry Kravis, as well as prominent business leaders who have served in Mr. Trump’s administrations.
Beginning in 2016, Mr. Wiseman was a top executive at BlackRock, the U.S. investment behemoth, but left in 2019 over his failure to disclose a consensual relationship with a colleague who reported to him. It was the lone very public setback in an otherwise high-flying career, but his friendship with Mr. Fink has endured.
Having an ambassador at this moment “who understands markets and finance and business, it’s almost essential,” Jay Clayton, a former chair of Apollo Global Management and a senior official in both Trump administrations, said in an interview.
“I think he has a head start, not just from who he knows in the business community and in the administration, but that he speaks the same language,” Mr. Clayton added.
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Senior executives who worked with Mr. Wiseman and mentored him described him as intelligent, with confidence, ambition and a no-nonsense demeanour.
“I find Mark to be very direct, in a positive way. He lets you know what he’s feeling, both positive and negative,” said Gary Cohn, a former top executive at Goldman Sachs who led the National Economic Council during Mr. Trump’s first term.
“He is probably a very good fit with the current administration, versus a career diplomat.”
He is also a quick study, former colleagues say.
“He just inhales information, and he has unlimited capacity to store it,” said Les Viner, former managing partner of law firm Torys LLP, who has known Mr. Wiseman for decades.
Mr. Viner said Mr. Wiseman will know every detail and nuance of the trade deal coming up for renegotiation. “He’ll have in his mind every line of every paragraph.”
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Getting a deal Canada can live with is expected to be Mr. Wiseman’s core task. “That’s the role right now,” Mr. Cohn said, adding: “There’s always a deal to be had.”
Friends say Mr. Wiseman is a skillful and relentless negotiator, and has shown a flair for finding creative ways to get complex deals done.
“This is, among many things, what he is really good at, which is figuring out what each side wants,” H. Rodgin Cohen, senior chair of the prominent U.S. law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, said in an interview.
Mr. Wiseman practised at the blue-chip firm in New York and Paris as a young lawyer in the 1990s, and was bright, pragmatic and unflappable, Mr. Cohen said.
Opposition politicians have raised concerns about the appointment, pointing to a newspaper column Mr. Wiseman shared in 2023 on increasing immigration over the objections of Quebec.
Mr. Wiseman is the co-founder of the Century Initiative, a non-profit organization that has advocated for a large increase in immigration to Canada over several decades.
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On social media, he shared a 2023 column, published by The Globe, that discussed the group’s policies and carried the headline: “100 million Canadians by 2100 may not be federal policy, but it should be – even if it makes Quebec howl.”
Mr. Wiseman has also written critically about supply management, calling the program a “sacred cow” that secures markets for protected players, impedes innovation and keeps prices artificially high for Canadians.
The Trump administration has singled out Canada’s supply-management system as a priority issue to be discussed in the USMCA talks.
Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet called Mr. Wiseman hostile and indifferent to Quebec’s values and interests.
In a statement, Mr. Blanchet said the U.S. is targeting supply management and sectors specific to Quebec, including forestry and aluminum, and with the appointment of Mr. Wiseman, Canada will have a negotiator who has no interest in the province.
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Ms. Hillman had announced her departure earlier in December.
She said in an interview that the timing gave Mr. Carney the ability to have “a team in place” as negotiations get under way on the USMCA, sometimes known as CUSMA in Canada.
It is up for review as of July 1, 2026, but Canada and the U.S. have already begun public consultations as part of the process.
Mr. Wiseman, 55, was born in Niagara Falls, Ont., studied at Queen’s University and earned his law degree and MBA from the University of Toronto. He was a Fulbright Scholar at Yale University and clerked for then-justice Beverley McLachlin at the Supreme Court of Canada. Ms. McLachlin later served as the top court’s chief justice.
After his stint at Sullivan & Cromwell, Mr. Wiseman returned to Toronto in 2000 and joined merchant bank Harrowston Inc.
“You can’t find a smarter person in Canada who will understand the intricacies of the American file. He is perfect for that,” Brent Belzberg, senior executive chairman of private equity firm TorQuest Partners and the founder of Harrowston, said in an e-mail.
“He is also close to the Prime Minister who weighs in personally on this file. Canada is lucky that Mark will make the personal sacrifice to take this on.”
Mr. Wiseman was one of the earliest financial backers of Mr. Carney’s bid to lead the Liberal Party earlier this year, and had been appointed to the Prime Minister’s Canada-U.S. advisory council in March.
He spent four years at Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan before he joined CPPIB in 2005, where he was later named CEO at the age of 42. More recently, from 2020 to 2023, he was chair of Alberta Investment Management Corp.
With reports from Robert Fife, Adrian Morrow and Tim Kiladze