Diana Fox Carney makes first trip to Halifax as Ocean Envoy ahead of international conference she will chair

Diana Fox Carney arrives in Halifax on Wednesday on her first trip there as Canada’s Ocean Envoy, ahead of an international conference she will chair in the city next spring.

The Our Ocean Conference has raised about US$180-billion in commitments since it was launched by former U.S. secretary of state John Kerry in 2014 as a faster alternative to negotiated treaties. The conference asks governments, businesses and conservation groups to make voluntary commitments to protect the ocean.

Ms. Fox Carney was named as the country’s first ocean envoy and conference chair by Fisheries Minister Joanne Thompson on Sept. 16. The Fisheries and Oceans Canada department is organizing the gathering, which aims to help protect 30 per cent of the oceans by 2030.

Ms. Fox Carney was not available for comment.

On this trip, she will hold meetings with stakeholders and partners helping to plan the conference. No other details were available about her itinerary.

Ms. Thompson’s office has not said whether Ms. Fox Carney will have staff or a budget, or how long her appointment will last.

Ms. Fox Carney, the wife of Prime Minister Mark Carney, was named without a competitive process to an unpaid role that the federal ethics commissioner’s office says generally falls outside Canada’s conflict-of-interest law.

Josh Laughren, executive director of Oceana Canada, an independent charity that aims to protect the country’s oceans and sea life, said he takes the appointment as a sign the government is serious about conservation.

The appointment came less than eight months before Canada hosts the conference in Halifax on May 10-11. There was no competitive process because the role is voluntary and unpaid, said Ira Khedkar, Ms. Thompson’s press secretary. She added that the Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner was consulted.

The Prime Minister’s Office referred questions about whether other candidates were considered, and what role Mr. Carney played, to Ms. Thompson’s office, which did not say whether anyone else was considered. Support for Ms. Fox Carney’s envoy role is supported through the fisheries minister’s office, and the PMO provides her with other support as needed, a PMO official said on background.

Canada has no formal role for the prime minister’s spouse, and marriage to the head of government carries no official title or defined duties.

Some in the ocean community see her access as an asset. Sean Brillant, senior conservation biologist for marine programs at the Canadian Wildlife Federation, said it is “a good thing that we have someone so close to the Prime Minister who’s going to be thinking about oceans quite a bit.”

Mr. Laughren said solving big ocean issues “takes a whole-of-government approach,” but that “too often, going back decades, it’s been relegated to a fisheries minister,” sometimes one who “doesn’t have access to those levers of power.”

Megan Bailey, Canada Research Chair in Dalhousie University’s Marine Affairs Program, also sees an advantage in having a chair who is independent from the department responsible for spending and commitments.

The department’s announcement highlights Ms. Fox Carney as an economist who has advised companies and investors on the transition to a climate-resilient economy. Mr. Carney’s public ethics disclosures list states she is the president and director of Pemba Projects Ltd., a Toronto sustainability consulting firm she controls, and said she also gets contract income from General Atlantic, a New York-based investment firm, and has shares in TechMet Ltd., a Dublin-based critical minerals investment company. They make no mention of the envoy role.

Generally, an unpaid ministerial appointee without an order-in-council “would not be considered a public office holder” under the Conflict of Interest Act, said Melanie Rushworth, director of communications for the ethics commissioner’s office. Nor must the Prime Minister disclose voluntary activity such as the envoy role, she said.

Ms. Fox Carney is the first person to lead an Our Ocean Conference who did not already hold public office when named, according to a Globe review of the previous conferences.

They have been led by heads of state, cabinet ministers, senior officials or legislators. John Kerry, the conference’s founder, hosted it as U.S. secretary of state in 2014 and 2016, then co-hosted the 2022 edition as U.S. special presidential envoy for climate alongside Palau’s President, Surangel Whipps Jr.

The Globe asked the minister’s office whether Ms. Fox Carney would be canvassing banks or industry for commitments as part of her role, but the office did not respond.

Governments have made most of the Our Ocean commitments, but companies account for more than a third of the US$176.7-billion, listed on the organization’s public commitment tracker. Most of that is a single pledge: US$49-billion from DNB, Norway’s largest bank, for renewable energy and infrastructure lending.

Apart from a US$20-million commitment in 2019 by DeepGreen Metals, the Vancouver-founded deep-sea mining company now called The Metals Company, the federal government is the only other Canadian pledger among the 566 organizations in the tracker.

Ottawa has filed 100 commitments worth US$4.2-billion since 2016, mostly domestic measures, and reports 65 per cent of them complete, according to the tracker. At this year’s conference in Kenya, Canada submitted 24 commitments worth about US$1.7-billion, more than any other participant, including the host. Nearly all of it came from domestic programs, including a $957.8-million plan to repair small craft harbours announced in May, and $24.4-million to ratify the High Seas Treaty, from the $3.8-billion nature strategy Mr. Carney announced in March.

More recent announcements will likely be profiled among Canada’s commitments in Halifax, including $82-million pledged last month for global ocean monitoring and $1.2-billion for domestic ocean protection, the first of three pillars of a new national ocean strategy.