Dominic Barton has been named board chair of Invest in Canada.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
Ottawa is retooling a federal agency in charge of attracting foreign investment, appointing private equity investor Gurinder Grewal as chief executive officer of Invest in Canada and consultant-turned-diplomat Dominic Barton as its board chair.
Prime Minister Mark Carney announced the changes on Monday afternoon, signalling a plan to create a more muscular role for the agency that was created in 2018 to promote foreign direct investment in Canada.
Invest in Canada will play a “more ambitious” part in helping Ottawa reach its goal to attract $500-billion in new private-sector capital and $1-trillion of total investment in Canada over five years, working closely with other federal agencies, the Prime Minister’s Office said in a news release.
Mr. Grewal is a Canadian executive with experience investing in sectors such as energy, infrastructure and technology, who was most recently the founder and managing partner of private equity firm MEM Growth Partners.
He previously worked for more than a decade at U.S.-based private equity investor Advent International. He studied at Canadian universities as well as Harvard Business School.
Mr. Barton led consulting giant McKinsey & Co. as global managing partner from 2009 to 2018, then served as Canada’s ambassador to China from 2019 to 2021. He is currently chair of mining group Rio Tinto. Mr. Barton worked closely with the previous Liberal government, including leading an advisory panel on economic growth set up by then-federal finance minister Bill Morneau in 2016.
“Dominic Barton and Gurinder Grewal have the experience and ambition Canada needs,” Mr. Carney said in a statement.
Mr. Grewal is starting a five-year term. Mr. Barton will serve as board chair on a part-time basis for three years.
They are expected to work closely with provincial, municipal and Indigenous officials, as well as the Major Projects Office that Ottawa created last year to “bring the world’s largest investors to Canadian projects and guide them from initial interest to actual shovels in the ground,” the PMO news release said.
Invest in Canada was recently moved under the oversight of Dominic LeBlanc, the federal minister who has led Canada’s fraught trade negotiations with the United States, and also holds the portfolios of internal trade and intergovernmental affairs.
The Globe and Mail reported last week that Laurel Broten, a former Ontario cabinet minister who was CEO of Invest in Canada since 2022, is leaving her job on September 1. That is more than a year ahead of schedule, as her term, set by the previous Liberal government, was scheduled to expire in October, 2027.
Ms. Broten did not respond to requests for comment last week.
Mr. Barton succeeds outgoing board chair Karl Tabbakh, a partner at law firm McCarthy Tétrault LLP, who will stay on Invest in Canada’s board past the expiry of his term to help with the leadership transition.
Mr. Carney’s statement thanked Mr. Tabbakh for his service as chair, but did not mention Ms. Broten’s departure.
Three sources said Ottawa’s decision to change Invest in Canada’s leadership stemmed from a desire to improve the agency’s performance and refocus its resources on Canada’s goal to attract new private-sector investment.
The sources said Ms. Broten’s departure is not related to the inaugural Canada Investment Summit, an invite-only event that is set to attract many of world’s most influential financial executives to Toronto in two weeks, and that she did not play a direct role in planning it.
The Globe is not identifying the sources because they are not authorized to speak publicly about confidential discussions.
Mr. Grewal and Mr. Barton will now have the important responsibility of managing high-level relationships with global investors. Ottawa and some of Canada’s largest pension funds are looking to deepen those ties over the coming months, starting with the summit.
Canada’s escalating trade war with the United States – sparked by a collapse in trade negotiations and the White House’s decision to impose steep new tariffs on select products – has increased the stakes for Canada’s pitch at the summit. Mr. Carney and top Canadian investors plan to frame Canada as a stable and competitive place to invest in an increasingly unstable world.
With a report from Jameson Berkow