The federal Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration (PFRA) will get a new boss for its reorganization.
Jamshed Merchant, who’s currently executive director of the federal National Land and Water Information Service, will serve at the same time as acting director-general for PFRA, replacing Harley Olsen effective immediately.
Olsen, who also directed PFRA in an “acting” capacity, was announced Monday as the new deputy minister of municipal affairs for the Saskatchewan government, replacing Terrance Lang. Olsen will work for the province starting Feb. 11 while on leave from the federal government.
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Merchant is no stranger to PFRA, having come to work for Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) as a soil scientist in 1983. He later served as manager for PFRA’s communications division, and most recently had worked for the Treasury Board of Canada before being named to replace Susan Till at the NLWIS in September 2007.
Headquartered in Regina, PFRA was first set up in 1935 to rehabilitate zones of drought and degraded soils in the three Prairie provinces. Its operations today involve land and range management, irrigation development, crop diversification, shelterbelts, community pastures and related technical services.
AAFC, which oversees PFRA, said it will soon begin the competition process to hire a new assistant deputy minister to manage a new AAFC branch whose activities include those of PFRA, NLWIS and the department’s agro-environmental policy bureau.
The new branch is now in place and will be called the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation and Environment branch.
