Inside the leadership reset at Ottawa's foreign investment agency — a new chair, a new chief executive, an unexplained resignation and a Toronto summit just two weeks out.
Prime Minister Mark Carney has installed Dominic Barton as chair of the board of Invest in Canada, the federal agency charged with attracting foreign direct investment, while simultaneously replacing its chief executive — a double change at the top announced on Monday, Aug. 31, 2026, barely two weeks before the government’s first major investment summit in Toronto.
The announcement paired Barton’s appointment with the arrival of Gurinder Grewal as chief executive, and came alongside confirmation that outgoing CEO Laurel Broten would leave the agency as of Sept. 1 without any public explanation for her early departure.
A Three-Year, Part-Time Term at the Head of the Board
Barton will serve as chair for a three-year term on a part-time basis, according to the government’s announcement. He takes over from Karl Tabbakh, who is not leaving the organization entirely — Tabbakh will remain a member of the Invest in Canada board to help carry the transition through.
That arrangement matters more than it might sound. A part-time chair paired with a brand-new chief executive leaves the board’s institutional memory resting substantially on directors who were already in place, which is why keeping the outgoing chair on the roster is a conventional governance safeguard rather than an afterthought.
In his statement, Carney thanked Tabbakh for his service as chair. He did not mention Broten.
What Dominic Barton Brings to Invest in Canada
Barton is among the most recognizable names in corporate Canada, and his résumé reads as a deliberate signal to international capital. He spent much of his career at the global consultancy McKinsey and Co., and currently chairs mining giant Rio Tinto as well as LeapFrog Investments.
He also has a direct historical connection to the agency he will now chair. In 2016, Barton was named chair of the Liberal government’s economic advisory council under then-prime minister Justin Trudeau. One of that council’s recommendations was the creation of a dedicated agency to attract foreign direct investment — the body that became Invest in Canada.
Barton’s public profile was shaped most sharply by his diplomatic posting. He served as Canada’s ambassador to China from 2019 to 2021, steering the relationship through its most acrimonious modern stretch. When he resigned in 2021, Trudeau credited him with helping secure the release of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, the two Canadians detained in China during that diplomatic rupture.
Gurinder Grewal Moves From MEM Growth Partners to the CEO Office
Grewal, founder and managing partner of MEM Growth Partners, becomes chief executive of Invest in Canada. The government’s release highlighted his track record of “putting capital to work” across the energy, industrial, infrastructure and technology sectors — the four areas where Ottawa is most actively courting outside money.
Carney framed the two appointments as a single package. He said Barton and Grewal have the expertise to help Canada capitalize on its strengths “with new investors,” adding that under their leadership the agency “will catalyze billions in new investments into Canada to build a stronger, more independent, more resilient Canadian economy for all.”
For a fuller breakdown of the two appointments and the mandates attached to them, see our earlier report on the Invest in Canada leadership changes naming Barton as chair and Grewal as CEO.
Laurel Broten Leaves a Year Early, With No Reason Given
The unexplained element of Monday’s news was the exit of Laurel Broten, a former Ontario cabinet minister who served under Liberal premier Dalton McGuinty before moving into federal agency leadership. She departs roughly four years into what is typically a five-year term.
Dominic LeBlanc, the minister responsible for the federal investment agency, announced on social media that he would accept Broten’s resignation effective Sept. 1, thanking her for her years of service and wishing her well.
Beyond that, nothing was offered publicly. No explanation for the early exit was provided on Monday. Spokespeople for LeBlanc’s office and the Privy Council Office did not answer questions about her departure, and a spokesperson for the Prime Minister’s Office deferred comment to LeBlanc’s statement.
The Toronto Investment Summit That Sets the Clock
The timing is the story’s centre of gravity. The leadership overhaul lands two weeks before Carney’s inaugural investment summit in Toronto, where the prime minister intends to gather foreign investors and the leaders of major domestic funds and pitch them directly on Canadian projects.
Changing both the chair and the chief executive of the country’s dedicated investment-attraction agency in the fortnight before that event is an unusual sequencing choice — the kind of move that either reflects urgency about the agency’s performance or a desire to present new faces to the room.
The summit itself sits inside a broader push. Carney’s government has spent months courting outside capital, including a trade tour that took the prime minister to Qatar on the heels of deals in China, and a domestic agenda mapped out at the cabinet planning forum in Banff that shaped the fall priorities.
Who Is Actually Organizing the September Summit
A source familiar with the summit’s planning, who was not authorized to speak publicly, told reporters that Invest in Canada’s role in the event has been largely confined to a handful of staff pulled in for logistics.
According to that source, the substantive organizing work has been driven by staff inside the Prime Minister’s Office and other government departments, working alongside the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and the Public Sector Pension Investment Board — two of the largest institutional investors in the country.
That detail reframes the appointments. If the agency was not leading the marquee event it exists to support, a leadership reset immediately beforehand starts to look less like a coincidence and more like a correction.
Why Boards and Executives Should Watch This One
Invest in Canada is a Crown entity, but its governance dynamics will feel familiar to anyone who has sat on a corporate board. Several signals in Monday’s announcement are worth noting for readers who follow board appointments:
- A private-sector chair with global recognition: Barton’s Rio Tinto and LeapFrog roles give the agency a chair whose name carries weight in the rooms where large cross-border allocations are decided.
- Continuity built into the transition: Retaining outgoing chair Karl Tabbakh on the board is a standard mechanism for protecting institutional knowledge during a simultaneous chair and CEO change.
- An operator, not an administrator, as CEO: Grewal comes from a growth-capital background rather than a public-service one, matching the agency’s mandate to close investment rather than simply promote it.
- A silence that will be noticed: The absence of any stated reason for Broten’s early resignation, and the absence of any mention of her in the prime minister’s statement, leaves an open question that neither the minister’s office nor the Privy Council Office addressed.
The Capital-Attraction Context Behind the Reshuffle
The broader backdrop is a Canadian economy working to widen its sources of capital beyond the United States, at a moment when trade relations with Washington have been anything but stable. That pressure has been visible in sectors from aerospace to consumer goods, including the ongoing tariff threat facing Bombardier’s US sales.
Domestic institutions have been moving in parallel with Ottawa’s push, deploying large pools of capital into Canadian companies rather than waiting for foreign money to arrive. Invest in Canada’s new leadership inherits that environment: an agency whose relevance depends on whether it can convert political attention into signed investment.
The next public test is close at hand. The Toronto summit will show whether Barton’s name and Grewal’s dealmaking background translate into the “billions in new investments” Carney promised — and whether the agency itself, rather than the Prime Minister’s Office, is the one delivering them.
