The Shopify CEO who suggested poor people shouldn't vote has Carney's ear. Here's proof

Just days after one of Canada’s richest men publicly supported the idea that pensioners and the poor should lose their right to vote — and that the wealthy should have several extra ballots to cast — Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke got an utterly predictable, mortifying endorsement.

“Tobi is a national treasure of Canada!”

That post was from billionaire weirdo Elon Musk, who notably has had his own foray into trying to shape public policy in the United States. The outcome of that misadventure has been, predictably, both abysmal and horrifying.

The world’s first trillionaire was just one of many who rallied around their fellow tech billionaire, Lutke, after he faced blowback for his musings this week. Lutke anyone receiving a “locked in and guaranteed” pension is now “a dependent” and “that means no voting.”

When a former executive from TD bank replied to suggest that the number of votes you have should be “proportional to the level of income tax you pay,” Lutke called that a “good system.”

That system would disenfranchise the poor, people with disabilities who can’t work, and millions of other Canadians.

But as we’ve all seen with Elon Musk, the man who just called Lutke a “national treasure,” the ultra wealthy have a level of access and power that make their musings more likely to influence reality than your average online shitposter. That’s why it’s essential to pay attention to the antidemocratic daydreams of multi-billionaires.

As for Lutke, he appears to have the ear of the prime minister of Canada, Mark Carney — and I’ve got the proof.

Independent journalist Dean Beeby, who is a wizard with freedom of information requests, got his hands on notes prepared for the prime minister ahead of a meeting with Lutke in January of this year.

Beeby was kind enough to share those with me.

The document has massive redactions, but it outlines clearly that the prime minister was set to meet directly with Lutke just months ago. It also highlights how Carney has reached out to Shopify, Lutke’s company, for input on tax policy.

“In 2025, you sought input from Shopify on how to improve the Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED) tax credit,” the document reads.

The next sentence in that same bullet point is redacted.

While it’s not unusual for the rich and powerful to have the ear of country’s leaders, that access is precisely why offhand posts about destroying basic democratic principles matter. If Tobi’s company was consulted about tax policy, what else have he and his colleagues influenced?

In fact, as I’ve previously highlighted, Lutke’s access and influence goes beyond a simple meeting with the prime minister.

Lutke is part of an initiative called Build Canada, a tech bro-backed effort to influence Canadian politics. It started as a WhatsApp group chat, and now serves as a website where primarily male executives share their ideas for Canadian policy.

Build Canada’s “memos” are groundbreaking stuff, including suggestions that the wealthy should pay even less tax on their capital gains or that immigrants’ spouses or kids should be considered “on their own merits.”

But much like Lutke, Build Canada appears to have captured the prime minister’s attention. As the Tyee has documented, about 20 of the policies that Carney’s government has passed have a striking similarity to suggestions from the Build Canada website.

Not to mention that a spokesperson for Build Canada told Taylor Noakes at DeSmog that Carney’s office “has reached out to Build Canada on occasion to ask about our memos.”

This is why billionaire musings about democracy can’t just be shrugged off. Their ideas run the risk of becoming Canadians’ reality.

Still, it was reassuring to see the reaction to Lutke’s braindead remarks. The blowback was so swift that Lutke himself tried to backtrack with an embarrassingly ignorant post.

“You pay $1 in tax on the first meal you have on January 1, getting you back to the vote you have today. funny how this is reported,” Lutke wrote on Twitter.

Given the initial proposal was specifically about “level of income tax you pay,” Lutke — the head of an e-commerce giant — either doesn’t know the difference between sales tax and income tax, or he thinks the rest of us don’t.

Lutke’s sycophantic supporters also quickly tried to run defence for the tech CEO.

Lucy Hargreaves, the CEO of Build Canada, said that she doesn’t think “wealthy people should get more votes,” but “maybe we should consider if it makes sense to have an age-out age for voting?”

Others tried another route, labelling people taking issue with the idea of the ultra-wealthy taking away their right to vote as jealous of Lutke’s success.

One Conservative digital campaign manager posted that Lutke was “getting tall poppied by the Laurentian thumbsuckers in realtime,” to which Shopify’s President Harley Finkelstein replied, “he’s unshakeable. It’s truly remarkable.”

Just a reminder: the blowback was to Lutke’s suggestion that it’s a good idea to take the right to vote away from the poor and pensioners.

The claim Canadians were just seeking to cut down the tallest poppy in our midst appeared to resonate with Lutke, who responded to another user who posted about “haters” with a one word reply: “envy.”

Several prominent voices were among those who were, according to Lutke, just jealous.

A day after I highlighted the lack of coverage of this story from outlets like CBC News and CTV News, both finally published stories about Lutke’s comments. B.C. Premier David Eby shared one of those articles, calling the Shopify CEO’s suggestion a “stupid idea.”

Speaking on my livestream Tuesday evening, NDP Leader Avi Lewis also rejected Lutke’s antidemocratic idea.

“This is embarrassing for Canada, that we have a CEO class that is trying to imitate the weirdness, the marginal extreme prejudicial worldview of the trillionaire class in the United States,” he told me.

“These are really un-Canadian, gross, anti-democratic views that are marginal, that do not have a large constituency, and the fact that he has a platform with which to spew them is troubling.

Lewis said he doesn’t think this is a “very popular kind of politics in Canada — but we can’t just stand by.”

“We got to call it out,” he said. “We can’t just stand by and let this crap go. This is noxious thinking that’s been spread.”

Many Canadians have vocally done exactly that, mocking the proposal and Tobi Lutke alongside it.

But hey, at least Lutke has Elon Musk’s support. That’s got to feel good. Right?