Bernadette Jordan, a former Liberal member of Parliament and minister in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet, has been named Canada’s new consul general in Boston.
Jordan, who represented South Shore-St. Margarets from 2015 to 2021, is replacing Rodger Cuzner, another former Nova Scotia Liberal MP who was appointed to the Senate in October.
Jordan served as minister of rural economic development from early 2019 to late 2019, and then as minister of fisheries, oceans, and the Coast Guard until her defeat in the 2021 federal election.
Her tenure as fisheries minister was marked by controversy, as violent clashes broke out on Nova Scotia’s south shore in the summer and fall of 2020 between commercial fishers and Indigenous fishers, who were trying to exercise their treaty rights to harvest lobster.
The federal government was criticized by people on both sides of the conflict for failing to ensure indigenous access to the fishery and, meanwhile, failing to enforce government rules around harvest seasons.
Jordan lost her re-election bid in 2021 to Conservative MP Rick Perkins.
