The Government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) has named a new consul general and deputy consul general to Canada, as part of what Foreign Affairs Minister Dwight Fitzgerald Bramble says is a major restructuring of the country’s overseas missions to better serve and mobilise the Vincentian diaspora.
Speaking at an Invest SVG diaspora outreach event in Toronto on Saturday, Bramble announced that Cabinet accepted his recommendations for the top diplomatic posts in Canada this week.
“… both of them will be in place by next month,” Bramble told the gathering of Vincentians and friends of SVG. “We haven’t officially announced it as yet, but I think you deserve that much information.”
Cuba, Taiwan-trained diplomats for Toronto
Bramble said the incoming consul general is Roderick Mc Kree, a lecturer at the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Community College and a native of Bequia and his deputy is Lavern “Gypsy” Phillips, of Marriaqua.
Mc Kree, who has over 30 years of teaching expertise, hold a Doctor of Education from the University of the West Indies.
He holds master’s and undergraduate degrees in psychology and psychosocial intervention from the University of the Orient, in Santiago, Cuba and a diploma in Spanish from the University of ISACA, Ciego de Avila, Cuba.
Phillips holds a bachelor’s degree in international business from Ming Chuan University in Taiwan and has worked at NICE Radio for over two decades.
She made failed bids in 2025 and 2020 to be the New Democratic Party’s (NDP) candidate for Marriaqua in the general election of each of those years.
Bramble told Vincentians in Toronto that McKree is “going to do wonders up here,” adding, “But again, the wonders that he’ll be able to do is going to be dependent on your involvement, your cooperation, your support.”
New roles: dedicated investment and diaspora officers in Toronto
Bramble said the consulate in Canada will no longer focus narrowly on routine consular functions such as passports and emergency support, but will be retooled to drive investment and structured diaspora engagement.
He announced two new specialist posts to be added to the mission — an investment officer and a diaspora officer.
“That is how serious we are about investment and diaspora affairs.”
The minister framed the changes as part of a broader strategy to make overseas offices “much more structured and targeted” in how they work with Vincentians abroad.
“We are reimagining and really expanding the consulates overseas,” he said.
“It’s going to be a much more structured and targeted approach to diaspora involvement.”
‘Give me diaspora’ — overseas Vincentians are central, not peripheral
Bramble, who holds the portfolio of foreign affairs, foreign trade, foreign investment and diaspora affairs, stressed that the NDP government sees Vincentians abroad as “central” to SVG’s development.
“At the centre of any approach to development is the recognition that the diaspora is not peripheral to development, but central to it,” he said.
“This is not about [Prime Minister Godwin] Friday, this is not about Bramble… this is about us, St. Vincent and the Grenadines.”
The minister said that when the Cabinet was being formed after the Nov. 27 general election, he specifically asked to be given responsibility for diaspora affairs.
“Some of you may have heard I was going to be minister of finance, some said I was going to be minister of sports,” said Bramble, a former national footballer and economist who was the economic development coordinator for the City of Estevan in Saskatchewan, Canada from 2017 to 2020, when he returned to SVG to get involved in Politics.
“But suffice it to say that I said to [Prime Minister Friday] in no uncertain terms, ‘Give me diaspora, Prime Minister’, because I know the value of our people beyond the shores of St. Vincent.”
Bramble, who spent more than two decades living abroad, said he has personally experienced the “unfortunate divide” some Vincentians at home have placed between locals and those who migrated.
“We have this dichotomy of Vincentians… Vincentians at home feel like the Vincentians abroad have no business in Vincentian business,” he said.
“That thinking is self-defeating, and it must stop.”
He pledged that as long as he holds the portfolio, diaspora Vincentians will not be treated as outsiders.
“As long as I am a minister of government… that reality will disappear,” Bramble said. “We value and we understand the value of the diaspora.”
New Department of Diaspora Affairs and a national registry
The announcement in Toronto comes as SVG moves to formalise diaspora policy and deepen its outreach.
Bramble said the government has upgraded the former Regional Integration and Diaspora Unit into a fully-fledged Department of Diaspora Affairs, headed by Ambassador Allan Alexander, the country’s non-resident ambassador to CARICOM.
“We felt that because diaspora engagement is so important, we could not leave it in the confines of a unit,” he explained.
“After the elections… we just created [a department].”
The new department is being staffed with at least four officers, including a diaspora projects officer and a diaspora liaison officer, he said.
He said one of the department’s first tasks is to build a national diaspora registry.
“… how can anybody guess how many Vincentians actually live outside of St. Vincent and the Grenadines?” Bramble asked.
“We need that data… evidence-based decision making — that’s where it’s at.”
He told attendees that the Consulate in New York has already begun circulating a questionnaire to gather information on Vincentians overseas, and urged those in Canada to participate as similar efforts roll out.
“We can’t be talking about engaging our diaspora and encouraging people in the diaspora to invest, and we don’t know who is where and what,” he said.
“We have to know how many people are living where… how well do you [the organisations] work together? Are you just organisations to say ‘I am a Vincentian living overseas’…? We could do much more than that.”