Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government has appointed a former oil executive to serve as Canada’s consul general in New York, according to a press release today from Global Affairs Canada (GAC).

Susannah Pierce, who served as president and country chair of Shell Canada Limited, will take over the role from a former public affairs chairman, Tom Clark.

According to a biographical note in GAC’s press release, Pierce also served as “director of corporate affairs for LNG Canada, a joint venture of Shell, Petronas, Mitsubishi Corporation, PetroChina and Korea Gas Corporation.”

Archived biographical notes elsewhere described Pierce as a board member of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute and the right-wing Fraser Institute.

In 2023, the advocacy group Environmental Defence accused Pierce of being a “climate villain painting Big Oil green.”

The group claimed: “Pierce is an expert level greenwasher, and it’s a tactic she uses to distract from her plans to continue expanding oil and gas and extract every ounce of revenue for Shell.”

The same year, Pierce reportedly told Reuters that oil and gas companies can’t be held solely responsible for the pace of the global energy transition.

Pierce said: “[If you are] a company that is servicing its customers that are still demanding a fossil fuel energy source, it’s very difficult to then not provide your customers with that energy they demand.”

She also expressed concerns about the Trudeau Liberal government’s mandatory cap on emissions from the Canadian oil and gas industry. She said: “I don’t think you should have an emissions cap on one sector by itself.”

Carney scrapped the emissions cap last year. In May, former Liberal environment minister Steven Guilbeault resigned as an MP, warning that Canada was “backsliding” on climate action under Carney.

The Carney government also appointed Claire Kennedy, a committee director at mining firm Alamos Gold Inc., as Canada’s consul general in Chicago, and former Liberal MP and minister Kamal Khera as consul general in Los Angeles.

Andrea Clements, a career diplomat, will serve as consul general in Detroit, Michigan.

The new diplomatic appointments come as the Carney government continues to renegotiate the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement after the Trump regime said this month it would not extend the deal in its current form. The current deal will not expire until 2036.

The current deal allows oil, gas and other exports to be traded freely between the U.S. and Canada.

In June, Minister Dominic LeBlanc said: “Oil trade from Fort McMurray is an example of that economic partnership that has benefited the American and Canadian economy.”