Morneau’s man
Barton led consultant’s Asia practice
Dominic Barton, head of consulting giant McKinsey & Co., has been tapped to lead the federal government’s economic advisory council. Barton’s experience working in Asia may point to Ottawa’s economic intentions going forward.
Dominic Barton, the new head of the Liberal government’s economic advisory council, honed his leadership expertise in Asia and offers clues about the economic direction the government could be taking in the coming years.
Barton is t he head of global consulting giant McKinsey & Co., a famously discreet and prestigious management firm that consults some of the world’s largest corporations. Finance Minister Bill Morneau announced his appointment to the council on Monday, with further appointees set to be named shortly.
The goal of the advisory council will be to provide direction and advice on how the government can foster economic growth as the Canadian economy continues to reel from a crash in oil prices. Barton’s appointment partially telegraphs information about the federal government’s economic intentions.
He has close ties to business and government in Asia, following a decade of developing McKinsey’s practice on the continent. He headed up the consulting firm’s office in South Korea f rom 2000 t o 2004 and served as McKinsey’s chairman of Asia from 2004 to 2009 in Shanghai.
In 2009, he took over the leadership of McKinsey from Ian Davis, his highly respected British predecessor. Barton was elected as managing director by the firm’s 400 directors in 2009, by all accounts an overwhelmingly popular choice following his successful leadership of the firm’s Asian practice.
Barton continues to have close ties to the continent, despite being based in London since 2009. He is the chairman of the International Advisory Committee to the president of South Korea on National Future and Vision and also sits on the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada’s board of directors.
Barton was born in Kampala, Uganda, to a missionary father and a nurse moth- er. The family later went on to settle in Sardis, to the south of Chilliwack, B.C.
He studied economics at the University of B. C. and later at Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, before going on to spend his career with McKinsey for the next 29 years.
The Fi nancial Times wrote in an interview with him in 2010, after taking over the top job at McKinsey, that he is a keen marathon runner who gets up at 6 a.m. and runs every other morning before starting work, saying that he brings a “distance runner’s stamina to the job.”
His role in the advisory council comes at a critical time for the Canadian economy. Economists forecast that gross domestic product will struggle to grow by more than one per cent this year — one of the weakest readings since the 2009 recession.
Morneau a nnounced Monday that the worsening economic outlook means t hat next year’s f ederal deficit will hit $ 18.4 billion — even before factoring in spending promises made during last year’s election campaign. The Liberal government intends to spend tens of billions on infrastructure in the coming years as a way to boost economic growth.
Morneau has said that he intends to leverage both public- sector and privatesector experts as part of his advisory panel to put together a growth strategy for Canada. Earlier this month, he held a closed door meeting with economists in Toronto to collect advice on methods to stoke growth.