Canada appoints new consul general in Chandigarh

TORONTO - Canada Monday appointed Scot Slessor as its new consul general in Chandigarh. He replaces Helen Economo Amundsen who has completed her three-year term.

The Chandigarh consulate general was opened in November 2003 by the then prime minister Jean Chretien during his state visit to India to ease visa burden on the Canadian high commission in New Delhi as the bulk of visa and immigration seekers came from Punjab.

But it ran into problems as the appointment of Indo-Canadian journalist Bhupinder Liddar as its first consul general was not cleared by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). Though Liddar was finally cleared, he was not sent to Chandigarh. Instead, he was appointed as the Canadian representative to the UN Environment Program and the UN Human Settlements Program (HABITAT) in Nairobi where he still serves.

Slessor , who holds a degree in Asian Studies/Anthropology from Saint Mary’s University, entered the public service in 1986, serving first with the Canada Employment and Immigration Commission in Toronto as a manager of youth employment centres, a Canadian foreign affairs release said. Leaving briefly to join the private sector, he re-entered the public service in 1993, working for the Canadian International Development Agency in China.

Slessor moved to the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade in 1996 and has since served in Amman (Jordan) and Bandar Seri Begawan (Brunei).

He is credited with creating the Youth International Internship Programme at the foreign affairs headquarters in Ottawa. Currently, he is serving as the director of the Centre for Foreign Languages at the Canadian Foreign Service Institute.

Over the past couple of years, Canada has been actively ramping up its presence in India, with the opening of four trade offices in major cities. With the signing of the nuclear deal between the countries in June, the major irritant in Canada-India relations has finally been removed.

(Gurmukh Singh can be contacted at gurmukh.s@ians.in)