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OTTAWA — Prime Minister Stephen Harper has appointed the country’s former top soldier to head the Canadian Space Agency in a surprise move that has raised questions about whether the civilian program is about to be militarized.

On Friday, Harper announced that former chief of defence staff Walter Natynczyk will become president of the Montreal-based space agency on Aug. 6.

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The move was part a package of major shifts in the senior ranks of the public service.

Other announcements included Paul Rochon as the new head of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and Ron Hallman as incoming president of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency. Those appointments are also crucial, in the wake of moves by the government to fold CIDA into the Foreign Affairs department, and to change the extent of environmental regulatory controls which protect the Canadian habitat.

But it’s the appointment of Natynczyk to the space agency that drew much of the attention on Friday. The appointment was unusual on two counts: Natynczyk had a long career in the military before he retired last year and his background was from the army, not the air force; and some of the previous presidents of the space agency had been astronauts such as Steve MacLean and Marc Garneau.