Key Takeaways
- Mark Carney appointed Dominic Barton chair of Invest in Canada and Gurinder Grewal its CEO.
- Barton will serve a three-year part-time term, while Grewal will serve five years as full-time CEO.
- Ottawa aims to use about $280 billion in federal support to catalyse more than $1 trillion in investment over five years.
From Investor Pitch to “Shovels in the Ground”
This is where the story gets more interesting.
Canada doesn't simply want Invest in Canada handing out brochures and telling international investors why the country is attractive.
The government wants the agency involved from the moment a major investor becomes interested all the way to what Ottawa calls “shovels in the ground.”
In other words:
Interest is nice.
Construction is better.
Invest in Canada is expected to connect foreign capital with Canadian opportunities and work alongside provincial, territorial, Indigenous and municipal partners, as well as Canada's Major Projects Office.
The government is particularly interested in attracting money into energy, critical minerals, AI and infrastructure.
Those aren't small-ticket industries.
A new mine, energy project, data centre or major piece of infrastructure can require enormous amounts of capital — and international investors have plenty of countries competing for it.
Canada now has to convince them to choose Canada.
Carney Is Putting Dominic Barton in the Chair
Dominic Barton is hardly new to the intersection of global business and Canadian public policy.
He spent more than three decades at McKinsey & Company, including nine years as its Global Managing Partner.
He currently chairs Rio Tinto and LeapFrog Investments.
Barton also chaired Canada's Advisory Council on Economic Growth and served as Canada's Ambassador to China between 2019 and 2021.
He will now serve a three-year, part-time term as Chair of Invest in Canada's board.
Gurinder Grewal Gets the Day-to-Day Job
If Barton takes the chair, Gurinder Grewal gets the full-time assignment.
Grewal is the Founder and Managing Partner of MEM Growth Partners.
Before that, he spent more than a decade at Advent International, where he became a Partner and Co-Head of Industrials, Infrastructure, and Energy.
Those words should sound familiar.
Infrastructure and energy are two of the areas Canada is specifically targeting for investment.
Grewal will serve a five-year term as CEO.
Canada Is Already Attracting Serious Money
The government isn't starting from zero.
Canada's stock of foreign direct investment reached $1.6 trillion at the end of 2025, an increase of 6.9% from the previous year.
Meanwhile, annual foreign direct investment inflows reached $96.8 billion in 2025.
According to the government's announcement, that was Canada's highest annual level since 2007.
But attracting almost $97 billion in a year and helping catalyse more than $1 trillion over five years are two very different challenges.
That's why these appointments matter.
Why Canada Is Chasing Investment So Aggressively
There is a bigger economic shift happening behind the announcement.
Canada is trying to build more at home while expanding its economic relationships abroad.
The country has 16 free trade agreements covering 51 countries, providing preferential access to markets representing approximately 1.5 billion consumers.
That's a powerful sales pitch.
But access to markets doesn't automatically build a mine.
It doesn't build an AI data centre.
It doesn't build an energy project.
Capital does.
And governments around the world are competing for the same pools of investment.
Canada's challenge is to make itself difficult for those investors to ignore.
TwikUp Insight
Forget the job titles for a moment.
The number that really matters in this announcement is:
$1 trillion.
Not because Canada suddenly has a trillion-dollar cheque waiting to be spent — it doesn't.
The government's strategy is to use roughly $280 billion in federal capital investments and incentives supporting third parties to help catalyse more than $1 trillion in investment from governments, businesses and institutional investors over five years.
That's an ambition.
Now comes the difficult part.
Barton and Grewal can meet investors. Ottawa can promote Canada's resources, trade access and economic potential. Governments can create incentives.
But eventually, success has to become visible.
A mine gets developed.
An energy project moves forward.
Infrastructure gets built.
An AI investment actually lands in Canada.
The real scorecard won't be how much money Canada hopes to attract. It will be how much gets committed — and how much gets built.