Harper makes ‘cunning' choice in sending Doer to U.S.
Outgoing NDP Premier's impact will depend on his ‘personal relationship with Stephen Harper,' says Lewis, a former Canadian ambassador to the UN- Sheldon Alberts: Wilson cites protectionism as Doer's premier challenge
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As Canada's ambassador to the United States for the past three years, Michael Wilson mostly went about his business quietly.
He was not Frank McKenna, who loved to press the flesh during his time in D.C., enjoyed stirring things up with the Bush administration when he felt Canada was being done wrong, and rarely met a microphone he didn't like. And he certainly wasn't Allan Gotlieb, the party-throwing diplomat who raised Canada's profile in the U.S. capital by wooing lawmakers and lobbyists alike with grand soirees that made him and his wife, Sondra, regulars in the society pages of the Washington Post.
Instead Wilson has been a workmanlike envoy, never flashy and certainly not seeking to make headlines. For Canadian reporters based in Washington, it was sometimes hard to tell whether Wilson actually liked the job -- he just never seemed to relish the glad-handing and schmoozing inherent to the position. And there was a sense that the Canadian media, especially, was to be tolerated but not courted -- though suspicions were the approach came on orders from Ottawa.
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