Prime Minister Mark Carney announced on September 15, 2026 that Dominic Barton, the former Canadian ambassador to China and long-time McKinsey global managing partner, will chair the board of Invest in Canada, the federal agency tasked with attracting foreign direct investment. The Prime Minister’s Office said Barton will serve a three-year part-time term, while Gurinder Grewal, founder of MEM Growth Partners, becomes chief executive on a five-year mandate.
The appointments arrive two weeks before Carney’s inaugural Canada Investment Summit in Toronto, where the government intends to court major foreign investors and domestic pension funds. Global News reported that a source familiar with summit planning, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said Invest in Canada’s actual contribution to the event has so far been limited to a handful of staff pulled into logistics work rather than substantive investment brokering.
Barton also chairs mining giant Rio Tinto and LeapFrog Investments, and previously led Canada’s Advisory Council on Economic Growth, according to the Prime Minister’s Office release. The National Post noted that Barton’s résumé, spanning three decades at a global consultancy and a diplomatic posting in Beijing during a period of strained Canada-China relations, makes him an unusual choice to spearhead a domestically focused investment drive at a moment when Ottawa is trying to distance the economy from reliance on any single trading partner.
A government leaning on outside expertise
The Prime Minister’s Office framed the shakeup as part of a push to catalyse $1 trillion in total investment over five years and pointed to FDI inflows of $96.8 billion in 2025, the highest annual level since 2007, as evidence the strategy is already working. The Globe and Mail reported that three sources familiar with the decision said the leadership change stemmed from a desire to improve the agency’s performance and refocus its resources, rather than any single scandal or failure, and that outgoing chief executive Catherine Broten’s departure was unrelated to summit planning.
The Globe’s sources also said Invest in Canada is being given a
