In a major push to reframe the role of its overseas diplomatic operations and unlock the economic and social potential of its global community of expatriates, the government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) has announced key leadership appointments for its Toronto consulate general, alongside sweeping structural changes to prioritize diaspora engagement and foreign investment.
Speaking at a diaspora outreach event hosted by Invest SVG in Toronto on Saturday, Foreign Affairs Minister Dwight Fitzgerald Bramble confirmed that SVG’s Cabinet has approved his recommendations for the top two diplomatic roles at the Canadian mission, with both appointees set to take up their posts by next month. The minister shared the early announcement with attending Vincentian expatriates and supporters, noting that the public formal reveal had not yet been made, but the community deserved advance insight into the changes.
The incoming consul general is Roderick Mc Kree, a native of Bequia and current lecturer at the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Community College. With more than 30 years of experience in education, Mc Kree holds a Doctor of Education degree from the University of the West Indies, a master’s and bachelor’s degree in psychology and psychosocial intervention from Cuba’s University of the Orient, and a Spanish language diploma from Cuba’s University of ISACA in Ciego de Avila. His deputy will be Lavern “Gypsy” Phillips, a Marriaqua native who earned a bachelor’s degree in international business from Taiwan’s Ming Chuan University and spent more than 20 years working at NICE Radio. Phillips also made two unsuccessful bids to secure the New Democratic Party (NDP) nomination for the Marriaqua constituency in the 2020 and 2025 general elections. Bramble expressed high confidence in the new leadership, telling attendees “Mc Kree is going to do wonders up here,” while emphasizing that the mission’s success would depend on broad collaboration with the local Vincentian community.
Beyond leadership changes, the SVG government is transforming the core mandate of the Canadian consulate, moving away from a narrow focus on routine consular services such as passport processing and emergency assistance. The restructured mission will now center on attracting foreign investment and building structured, long-term engagement with the Canadian-based Vincentian diaspora. To support this new direction, two new specialized full-time positions — an investment officer and a dedicated diaspora officer — will be added to the Toronto mission’s staff. Bramble noted the new posts signal the government’s unwavering commitment to elevating investment and diaspora affairs as national priorities.
These changes to the Toronto mission form part of a broader national strategy to reimagine and expand all of SVG’s overseas diplomatic missions, with the goal of making engagement with expatriate communities far more structured and targeted than in previous years. For the current NDP administration, which took office following the November 2025 general election, diaspora communities are not an afterthought to national development — they are a central pillar.
Bramble, who holds combined portfolios for foreign affairs, foreign trade, foreign investment and diaspora affairs, explained that he explicitly requested the diaspora affairs portfolio when Prime Minister Godwin Friday was forming the new Cabinet. Despite widespread speculation that he would take on finance or sports portfolios (Bramble is a former national footballer and economist who worked as economic development coordinator for Estevan, Saskatchewan in Canada from 2017 to 2020 before returning to SVG to enter politics), he said he made his priority clear: “Give me diaspora, Prime Minister.” Having lived abroad for more than 20 years himself, Bramble said he has directly experienced the harmful artificial divide that sometimes separates domestic and expatriate Vincentians, with local residents often sidelining those who moved overseas. “That thinking is self-defeating, and it must stop,” he said, pledging that as long as he holds his ministerial post, diaspora Vincentians will never be treated as outsiders to national affairs.
The Toronto announcements coincide with broader institutional changes to formalize SVG’s diaspora policy at home. The government has upgraded the former Regional Integration and Diaspora Unit into a fully independent Department of Diaspora Affairs, led by Ambassador Allan Alexander — SVG’s non-resident ambassador to CARICOM. Bramble explained that the upgrade was necessary because of the outsized importance of diaspora engagement, which could no longer be confined to a small internal unit. The new department will be staffed by at least four dedicated officers, including a diaspora projects officer and a diaspora liaison officer.
One of the new department’s first core initiatives is the creation of a national diaspora registry, designed to collect accurate data on the size and distribution of SVG’s global expatriate community. “How can anybody guess how many Vincentians actually live outside of St. Vincent and the Grenadines?” Bramble asked, noting that evidence-based policy making requires reliable demographic data to guide engagement efforts. The registry initiative has already launched in New York, where the local consulate is circulating a questionnaire to gather information from Vincentian residents, and Bramble urged Canadian-based Vincentians to participate when the effort rolls out across the country. “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… what strengths our community holds, and how local organizations can collaborate more effectively to drive national progress.”