Ottawa, ON – Today, Aaron Gunn, Conservative Shadow Minister for Ethics and Accountable Government, sent the following letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney on the appointment of Dominic Barton and the resignation of the Invest in Canada CEO:
Prime Minister,
Yesterday, you announced the appointment of Dominic Barton as the new Chair of the Board of Invest in Canada, completing the reunion of the Liberal brain trust, alongside Mark Wiseman, Michael Sabia and yourself, whose advice delivered sluggish economic growth, massive inflation, and carveouts, bailouts and handouts to the Liberal club for 11 years.
Barton’s scandal-plagued reputation is well known. During his time working up the corporate ladder at McKinsey, the firm was forced to pay $650 million for advising Purdue Pharma to ‘supercharge’ sales of the highly-addictive opioid OxyContin.
After playing a role in accelerating the opioid epidemic, the firm worked heavily with Chinese state-owned companies, even holding their 2018 corporate retreat near Beijing’s notorious Uyghur internment camps.
As head of the Liberal Advisory Council on Economic Growth, Barton and McKinsey advised the creation of the failed Canada Infrastructure Bank that never ‘catalyzed’ the promised private-sector investment, along with the failed Supercluster strategy that failed to create the promised jobs.
As taxpayers lost over $1 billion on these initiatives, insiders and McKinsey got rich. Between 2015 and 2023, McKinsey would be awarded $200 million in contracts — 90 per cent of which were awarded without following the appropriate guidelines, according to the Auditor General.
But while picking Barton raises serious concerns about rewarding another long-time Liberal insider, there are even more serious questions about why there was a vacancy available to appoint him at all.
Just weeks before your flagship investment summit, which has been pitched as a core part of your government’s strategy to create economic growth, the head of your investment agency resigned without any explanation.
What raises even more questions is that they resigned more than a year before their term traditionally ends, and comes at the same time as the head of your newly-created Defence Investment Agency is also expected to resign.
This would be like the coach of a professional hockey team resigning 10 days before the Stanley Cup Finals. People would, rightly, have questions, and Conservatives want answers.
Did you push out the head of Invest in Canada to fill the job with a fellow Liberal insider? Why are favoured insiders still getting cushy appointments despite their record of failure and waste? What’s the real reason the heads of Canada’s investment agencies are resigning so suddenly?
Conservatives will always fight for a government that serves hard-working families and businesses, not some special Liberal club. We will get answers to ensure our government is effective and accountable to those we serve.