Shopify’s Leaders Are Pushing Right-Wing Politics in Canada w/ Rachel Gilmore

0:00SPEAKER_00:Because they are having a disproportionate impact on our society right now. And uh, I would like to see the government grow a spine and actually put its elbows up for Canada, meaning actual everyday Canadians and not just the wealthiest among us.

0:34SPEAKER_01:Made in partnership with the Nation magazine. I'm your host, Paris Marks, and this week my guest is Rachel Gilmore. Rachel is an award-winning independent journalist who covers a lot of Canadian politics and certainly what the extreme right is doing in Canada right now. And that certainly relates to our conversation this week. She also has a newsletter called Bubble Pop. So I wanted to have Rachel back on the show because Toby Lutke, the CEO of Shopify, a merchant company that I think a lot of people might be familiar with or maybe don't recognize that they use very often because it basically underpins a lot of more independent online stores, started making tweets in Canada that were pretty supportive of taking away the rights of certain people in society from voting, right?

1:18SPEAKER_01:You know, to basically take away their uh voting enfranchisement. And this made a lot of people angry. You know, he tweets a lot of right-wing things, but this one finally got a lot more attention than some of the things that he posts more regularly because it was, you know, really this wealthy person, one of the wealthiest people in Canada, suggesting that people's right to vote be revoked. I figured this was a good time not just to have Rachel back on the show, but to talk about Shopify as a company and the way that its leadership is pushing the kind of right-wing politics that we're seeing in the United States.

1:52SPEAKER_01:I felt that this was important because we talk a lot about, say, Twitter X as a platform that is pushing right-wing politics, or Substack as a platform whose leadership is okay with right-wing politics being supported and monetized through that platform and using free speech as a justification. But I feel like Shopify doesn't enter into that conversation nearly as much because its leadership, I would argue, is trying to affect politics in Canada and not in the United States.

2:22SPEAKER_01:And after this series of tweets by the CEO, I figured it was time to kind of have that conversation, right? I think people need to understand what Shopify is up to, what its leaders are up to, and why it should be seen in the negative light that companies like Twitter or Substack are seen in. To the degree that a lot of people have left platforms like Twitter X or Substack because of the way that it promotes right-wing politics. Um, and I think that Shopify should be in that category too.

2:52SPEAKER_01:But I feel like a lot of, say, American content creators and probably international ones as well, who are avoiding those platforms are still operating with Shopify or, you know, are still fine with using Shopify because the political impact of the actions of the company's leadership are felt in Canada and not in the United States. And so I think that that needs to change. Um, and I would like to see people who know better to stop selling on Shopify, to stop doing ads for Shopify, because they certainly don't like us using platforms that push right-wing politics in the United States.

3:27SPEAKER_01:We also don't like that they support platforms and run ads for platforms that are doing the same up here in Canada. And we would hope for a bit of solidarity on that front. And so I was really happy to have Rachel on the show to dig into what Shopify and what Toby Lutkey are doing, the way that they are influencing Mark Carney's government and certainly seeing tangible policy changes as a result of that, and how they are pushing for far more in a much more radical direction, uh, you know, when we think about the types of things that these people are interested in.

3:56SPEAKER_01:So I hope that you enjoy this conversation. If you do, make sure to leave a five-star view on your podcast platform of choice. You can share the show on social media or with any friends or colleagues who you think would learn from it. And if you do want to support the work that goes into making tech won't save us every single week so I can keep having these critical, in-depth conversations that try to explore, you know, the ways that the tech industry, these tech companies, these tech leaders are affecting our society.

4:17SPEAKER_01:You can join supporters like Chris from Toronto by going to patreon.com slash tech won't save us and becoming a supporter as well. Thanks so much and enjoy this week's conversation. Rachel, welcome back to Tech Won't Save Us.

4:29SPEAKER_00:Thanks for having me on. I'm excited to be here.

4:32SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. You know, you were on the show almost two years ago, exactly. And, you know, I can't believe you haven't been on again. Of course, I was on your podcast when you were doing it plenty of times.

4:42SPEAKER_00:It's been very one-sided, Paris. You know? Yeah. It's hard time.

4:48SPEAKER_01:To be fair, I I comment more on Canada than you comment on technology.

4:52SPEAKER_00:So this is why it's very true.

4:53SPEAKER_01:Yeah.

4:54SPEAKER_00:And people actually listen to your podcast. So, you know, it's a little higher stakes.

5:01SPEAKER_01:I I wouldn't have gone there, but you know, it's okay.

5:03SPEAKER_00:It can be self-deprecating. Yeah.

5:06SPEAKER_01:All right. So listen, there's a lot that we can talk about. You know, I think we've been doing more episodes on Canada recently on the podcast. So hopefully the international listenership will be interested. But I think that this is a subject, you know, what we're going to be talking about today, that certainly is about Canada, but is related to, I think, what we're seeing in a lot of different countries, right? Where we're seeing the tech industry show its influence.

5:33SPEAKER_01:And in Canada, a lot of that comes through a company called Shopify. Um, and in particular, its CEO, you know, its founder, Toby Lutke. Who is this guy for people who wouldn't be aware?

5:46SPEAKER_00:So Toby is um, he's an interesting character, kind of has a Nosperatu vibe, if you uh have ever seen a photo of him. But uh yeah, he so he's he's the CEO of the company. Um, I believe he actually started it out as a um snowboarding shop of some kind. Um yeah, and then it it blossomed. Um I'm probably butchering the history here, but oh yeah, he so he actually um initially created an online snowboard shop, which then inspired him to build a platform that would empower entrepreneurs to sell online.

6:24SPEAKER_00:Um I'm reading a bio right now. But yeah, um, and basically Shopify exploded. And it's one of those huge companies that you may have never heard of in the sense, although it's really hard to get away from their ads. So you very much might have heard of them. Yeah, they basically are kind of the go-between, right? Where they make it easier for particularly small businesses, but some big ones too, to reach customers and they kind of provide that online infrastructure for the sales to take place.

6:53SPEAKER_00:Um, so and they get to take a little cut from those sales. So uh ends up being very profitable for them, which has turned Toby into one of Canada's richest men. Um, he's definitely in the top 20. Last I checked, and he's worth, I believe his net worth is around$10 billion. So, you know, uh nice tidy sum from all of that.

7:13SPEAKER_01:Yeah, he's doing all right, you know, compared to many Canadians, certainly. And like you're saying, Shopify is this company that like a lot of people would probably not be very familiar with. Like they have certainly used a Shopify store because so many of the more independent stores online and even stores that are run by major companies are run on Shopify, you know, if you're not going through Amazon or or something like that. But even recently, you know, they they launched this brand called Shop as well, um, which, you know, might not be apparent that it is part of Shopify, but it is too.

7:47SPEAKER_01:So, you know, it's very likely that you've probably bought from a Shopify store rather recently and not realized it. And, you know, that, as you're saying, has allowed the company to make a lot of money because as I understand it, it's one of the largest companies in Canada at the moment.

8:02SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think it's the third largest by market cap, only after two banks. And uh Canada's known for its uh diversity and competition in the banking sector. So, and uh for the Americans listening, I'm being very sarcastic. So, yeah, basically it's uh yeah, it's a very successful, um, very large company. The, you know, there's a little debate from some more progressive economists about the actual impact and like financial um weight that Shopify carries in terms of how many jobs it actually creates in Canada and things like that.

8:37SPEAKER_00:So depending on the indicators you use, it's actually not necessarily as big of an employer as some other companies, but it is certainly in terms of market cap one of the largest.

8:47SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that that's not a surprise either, I feel like. You know, when we look at these tech companies, relative to the amount of money that they make, they often have a much kind of smaller staff than what you would expect of these more traditional companies. The differences being like maybe an Amazon or something because they're also employing all these warehouse workers and you know, things like that. But if you're a Shopify, I'm assuming you have these engineers, you know, these software developers.

9:10SPEAKER_01:Yeah, certainly certainly you'd have the marketing teams and the HR and things like that. But you're not having this massive workforce that is like directly dealing with all of these customers. So you can run it, you know, a lot more efficiently. But of course, the reason that I wanted to talk to you about Toby and about Shopify is not so that we can understand the company, but so that we can deal with the political angle of this, right? Because we hear a lot about the politics of the billionaires in the United States, but maybe we don't always recognize that the billionaires in a lot of other countries, the tech billionaires, are doing something very similar.

9:41SPEAKER_01:So, what are we seeing with kind of the political direction of Shopify and of Toby Lutke in particular?

9:49SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so Toby is um, I kind of like to think of him as a bargain-bin Elon Musk. It's like he wants to be Elon Musk, but he uh, you know, isn't quite the uh, you know, he's only a multi-billionaire. He's not a trillionaire. Um, although I guess Elon just lost that title too. But um, you know, but he very much has a similar sort of he he has a respect for Elon Musk to this day, which is very interesting. Just recently called Elon uh one of the greatest entrepreneurs that ever was.

10:22SPEAKER_00:Um he likes to take to Twitter and deride socialists, for example. Um, he has shared literally, I have a screenshot of um, he's shared the same tweets as Elon as Elon Musk about the shift where what used to be center is now seen as far right. And it's like, no, bro, you just got radicalized. I don't know what to tell you.

10:45SPEAKER_01:It reminds me of uh this recent economist interview that Elon Musk did, and basically he was being pushed on his politics, and he was like, no, the media is just slandering the far right. I'm actually representing and supporting normal people and their politics, not the far right. And it's like, yeah, I'm sure you, the billionaire who has completely isolated yourself from regular people, is the representative of normal, you know, normal and Brits or whatever.

11:13SPEAKER_00:When I think normal guy, the first person I think of is Elon Musk, you know?

11:17SPEAKER_01:It's like in the dictionary or the encyclopedia.

11:19SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, 100%. Yeah. Um, but yeah, so Toby's basically kind of a an offshoot of that. He's sort of an Elon Musk variant that is infecting Canada.

11:31SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's I don't know, it's so it's so terrible to see these people and like the influence that they can wield. And I want to talk a bit about the political positions, right? Because the reason I wanted to have you on now is because I feel like Toby is getting attention that he hasn't had in quite some time for his political positions. And in particular, you know, opposition to democracy, which is something that we're seeing from so many of these billionaires, you know, people like Peter Thiel, for example, Elon Musk himself.

11:55SPEAKER_01:But what was Toby tweeting about recently that finally got a lot of people up in arms about what he was doing and what he is saying?

12:03SPEAKER_00:So the thing that he just tweeted about is really interesting. Um, I do want to also mention at some point the sort of road to hear with his company, because this isn't a new politics from him. A lot of people are just seeing it for the first time. But that being said, the thing that he said this week was he uh came out and suggested, first of all, that pensioners, anyone who is um receiving a locked-in guaranteed pension is now a dependent and therefore should not have the right to vote.

12:36SPEAKER_00:So I guess his are his logic here is that if you are uh you know benefiting from social programs or not necessarily paying into these systems, regardless of whether you paid into them your whole life, um, that you should not have a say in democracy, which is just antithetical to the very idea of democracy. And then this guy who um is from uh one of the top three largest companies by market cap in Canada, TD Bank, a former VP of TD Bank who's now retired, replied to Toby and suggested that perhaps we should actually have a voting system that is tied to the amount of income tax you pay.

13:16SPEAKER_00:So for people who pay between$1 and 100K, that's one vote. And then it keeps increasing until I believe the cap that he proposed was five votes for people who pay more than$500,000. You'll notice that's not a percentage. Okay. So, like obviously$100,000 for you and me is gonna be a very significant chunk, if not all, if not more than all, of many people's income. Um, and would therefore be felt a lot more than someone like Toby, who is worth$10 billion.

13:49SPEAKER_00:So there's a reason they're not saying percentage there. But um, yeah, he suggested basically that the rich have more of a right to vote than the poor who would have no vote under this scenario, because there is a degree of, you know, there's a lot of people that don't end up in a net sense as a result of benefits or um, you know, other programs. They end up, you know, in a net sense, not paying income tax, people who live with disabilities, who can't work, stay-at-home parents.

14:17SPEAKER_00:He's basically calling for the disenfranchisement of all of these people from our democratic systems. And I guess the most important thing I should mention here, so the VP of T T D Bank, former VP of TD Bank mentioned this. But Toby Lutke responded and said, good system, because that barently sounds great to him. Interestingly, too, because my understanding is his salary from Shopify was one dollar. So I'm not actually even sure that he pays income tax.

14:45SPEAKER_00:Um he may pay other kinds of taxes, but my understanding is if you have a$1 salary, you're not necessarily going to be paying income tax. So I guess he was advocating for his own disenfranchisement. But in defending this position, he also confused sales tax and income tax. He was like, the second you have a meal on January 1st, um, you've paid a dollar in tax on it and you get your vote back. And I'm like, bro, you run one of the world's largest e-commerce giants and you don't know the difference between sales tax and income tax.

15:16SPEAKER_00:He might have just been assuming we're all stupid and trying to backtrack. But yeah, it was it's pretty wild.

15:22SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it it sounds absolutely wild, right? For for so many reasons. And for a second there, I was like, oh, maybe this kind of a system would encourage the rich to actually pay more taxes for once. But given that you explain that there's a scale here that caps out, you know, no, you know, they're just gonna pay the amount they're gonna pay and they're still gonna fight to pay as little as possible. And and as you say, I'm sure Toby pays plenty in like, or, you know, a bit in capital gains tax because the capital gains tax is much lower than the income tax, which would be part of the reason someone like him is not getting much of a salary and is making his money in other ways, right?

15:56SPEAKER_01:Um, which of course many rich people are doing. But this stood out to me for many reasons, and you know, it seems like it stood out to a lot of people because there has been a lot of attention on this. But, you know, here is another one of these tech billionaires who is openly advocating against the democratic principles that have governed, you know, our country for a very long time. What does that tell you about the direction these people are taking?

16:22SPEAKER_01:And, you know, as you mentioned, I do want to go back to talking about, you know, the road here, but what does that tell us about where we are now with people like, with people like Toby Lookie and these other kind of tech millionaires and billionaires who are surrounding him and who are also listening to the ideas of people like Elon Musk and Peter Teal and these other people in the States?

16:41SPEAKER_00:I mean, it tells us a couple things. First of all, the influence of people like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk on all of these sycophantic, like, you know, I guess um a multi-hundred billionaire is uh a bigger, a bigger fish than just a someone with$10 billion or who has a net worth of that amount. So, you know, they're they're kind of there's these layers of sycophancy, like, you know, just going down by these income brackets. So Peter Thiel and Elon Musk and these guys are um are having this real influence apparently on these guys.

17:14SPEAKER_00:Um, or maybe they just all happen to turn into chuds, maybe be a certain amount of money just like rots your brain. But um, but the other thing that definitely stands out to me about this is how emboldened they are. This guy is taking to Twitter to muse about taking the right to vote away from millions of people. That is unhinged. And to feel confident enough in your own, um, the way that you'll be received, the way that you are untouchable, the way that this won't impact people's support of the services that you provide.

17:47SPEAKER_00:That to me suggests a degree of impunity that these guys are moving through the world with that is really concerning. I mean, it's scary because it's very anti-democratic. And we're living through this time where wealth inequality is becoming worse and worse and worse. And that seems to be coupled with this sort of rise in fascistic tendencies from the people who are aggregating those massive amounts of wealth. Like for US listeners who might think that Canada is like kind of a calm dystopia or commie utopia, depending on how you feel about that.

18:21SPEAKER_00:Um, you know, we actually have one of the worst wealth gaps that we have had in our own recorded history. So, since our um statistics department, Statistics Canada has been keeping track. So for about I think it's just over two decades, the wealth inequality levels in Canada are the worst they've ever been. And it gets worse every year. Like I started pointing to this, uh, the figures from 2025 as the worst. Now it's the figures, well, I guess it would have been 2024.

18:48SPEAKER_00:Now it's the figures from 2025. So it's just, it's getting worse and worse every year. And um, I think it's really scary to see the power these guys have, the impunity with which they wield that power, and what they're using it for.

19:03SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's absolutely concerning, right? And it's no surprise to see that the wealth gap and wealth inequality continue to grow, right? Especially given the way that we've set up our society and our economy, how that's all functioning, and certainly, you know, what's happening at the moment, which we'll come back to when discussing, you know, existing policy and that's how that's affecting things. And I think, you know, in pointing out the impunity that these people feel is really important, right?

19:26SPEAKER_01:Um, because it does feel like these tech billionaires do feel that they are above accountability, that they can't be punished for anything that they do, even when it harms other people. And that even if they're not actively disenfranchising people, that they do have a sway over the political system that a lot of other people would not. And I want to return to that piece of it in a second because I do want to go back to what you were saying, right?

19:49SPEAKER_01:In in terms of the road to how we got here. And I'm sure Toby Lutke of six, seven years ago, eight years ago, was not openly posting about disenfranchising people on Twitter or or now X. So what is the evolution that we have seen in this company and this man and you know, really the larger kind of tech elite class in in Canada?

20:14SPEAKER_00:Yeah, well, and I think it's really interesting too, right? Because um a lot of people might see this and just think, oh, their CEO sucks. Get him out and you know, Shopify is fine. But no, actually, one thing that's really interesting is I did a lot of reporting on Shopify a couple of years ago. And I spoke to a lot of at the time current and former employees who gave me some sense of the sort of inside dynamics of Shopify. And my understanding is that one of the more sort of aggressively ideological members of their executive team at that time was Kazna Jadian, who was their COO, I believe.

20:50SPEAKER_00:And he, interestingly, within the Canadian context, actually uh was originally a staffer for Jason Kenny, I believe, um, who was a conservative MP and cabinet minister in Stephen Harper's government. He has long been one of the more openly ideological of these guys. But uh, and I'll put a pin in that because there's more to say on that. But um, you know, there were these little moments in the public eye where we got a sense of how Shopify as a company is orienting itself with respect to these important social issues.

21:27SPEAKER_00:So, one really big example that was one of the first ones that made headlines as a result of Shopify's handling of it was that um I believe that they were providing their merchant services to Breitbart, you know, which is this like far right, uh, you know, Steve Bannon tied um news website using the term news like extremely generously. Um there was a lot of backlash to them providing their merchant services to Breitbart. And my understanding was, at least initially, he refused to do so, Toby Lukey.

22:07SPEAKER_00:And he came out publicly. Um, you know, a quote that he put out at the time was to kick off a merchant is to censor ideas and interfere with the free exchange of products at the core of commerce. Where would it begin and end? Who gets to decide what can be sold and what can't? If we start blocking out voices, we would fall short of our goals as a company to make commerce better for everyone. Instead, we would have a biased and diminished platform.

22:31SPEAKER_00:And this actually played out over the years to the point that they were providing merchant services to InfoWars or to, sorry, not InfoWars, to the Alex Jones store, I believe it was called. And um I spoke to a lawyer representing the families of Sandy Hook victims, the uh mass shooting at an elementary school that Alex Jones was sued for framing as a false flag event. Um, and the lawyer was horrified that Shopify was continuing to provide these merchant services.

23:05SPEAKER_00:I also uncovered several World War II memorabilia websites that were selling lots of Nazi memorabilia. And I found Shopify, you know, they're they were all over the code for these websites. They were were providing this e-commerce framework, um, the merchant services for these websites that are selling neo-Nazi or sorry, real Nazi, not neo-Nazi um merchandise. And uh yeah, it's it's just, you know, I also was digging into it and reached out to um Shopify when they were providing merchant services to the Libs of TikTok website as well.

23:43SPEAKER_00:Um, so helping that influencer to sell her merch. And it was selling stuff like uh that had grooming allegations on it, things like that about the LGBTQ community. I'm sure that most of your listeners are familiar with Libs of TikTok, but it's this sort of like right-wing chud, transphobic, awful, hateful account. Anyway, throughout all of this, Shopify initially had an acceptable use policy for its merchants that had rules around um sort of hateful uh content on their uh the people using their merchant services.

24:15SPEAKER_00:After I did a bunch of reporting on this, they actually changed their acceptable use policy to remove that aspect. Um I don't know if that had anything to do with me. Um maybe it was just uh interesting timing. Maybe they were feeling the heat.

24:29SPEAKER_01:I'm sure.

24:30SPEAKER_00:Um yeah. But uh yeah, it was um really, really significant uh that that that change was made, but it reflects the sort of ideology that I think Toby had, dating back to that initial Breitbart uh scandal, which was this more sort of libertarian approach. But they've gone more right wing publicly in terms of the ideas that they're espousing and the ideologies that they're pushing. And I think that one of the most interesting examples of that is their COO, Kazna Jadian, co-founded alongside his wife, Candace Malcolm, this website called True North, which was this right wing news, again, using that term very generously, website.

25:12SPEAKER_00:And it's done all kinds of really horrific reporting. But one of the more significant moments was uh one of their reporters, Harrison Faulkner, did an interview with the founder of the Proud Boys, Gavin McInnes, which is a you know designated terrorist group in Canada. And they were laughing about uh, you know, the ethnic makeup of Toronto, and you know, how I believe they were the joke was specifically about, you know, finally seeing another white person in Toronto between the two.

25:47SPEAKER_00:So it was like a really chummy interview and really gross. And um, yeah, the the interview was actually later taken down. And not long afterwards, Harrison Faulkner, the reporter in question, was not with True North for a while. He's back now, interestingly, um, interviewing people like Jason Kenny. But anyway, sorry, I'm getting too into the Canadian weeds here. But it's significant that basically, uh, when Press Progress, a Canadian news outlet, was covering this website and the story of that interview with Gavin McKinnon's, um they reached out to Candace Malcolm, who is married to Kaz Najadian, the Shopify COO, who he co-founded this website with, right?

26:28SPEAKER_00:Basically, they reached out and Candace Malcolm confirmed that she and her husband Kaz were some of the primary uh funders of this website. And you can imagine, therefore, where that money is coming from, because at the time, Kaz was COO of Shopify. Now, since this time, uh True North has rebranded as Juno News. I don't know the degree of involvement, like how the money may or may not have moved over alongside that rebrand. They're on Substack now.

27:00SPEAKER_00:So I don't know if things might have changed in terms of the infrastructure of that. But I do think it's significant that one of these, at the time, Shopify executives, was having a huge sway on Canadian narratives in the public sphere through this like news website. That wasn't some obscure thing. Like leaders of the conservative party, Pierre Poliev, who's currently the leader of the conservative party, would sit down for interviews with Candace Malcolm and these true North folks.

27:28SPEAKER_00:So it wasn't like, as much as some of the stuff it was publishing, I would argue was very fringe, it wasn't fringe as an outlet. It was one of its uh top editors is now a sitting politician, an MP, a member of parliament in the Canadian Parliament, Andrew Lawton. So yeah, uh there's sort of um fingers being placed on the scale by uh Shopify executive at the time and his money that presumably he receives through Shopify at the time. And now we're seeing Toby publicly stating all of this stuff about how our democratic systems should work, how taxation should be taken into account.

28:11SPEAKER_00:And it's just very interesting to me that these folks are trying to influence Canadian public policy and arguably to a degree succeeding.

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29:10SPEAKER_01:You'll find the link to this exclusive offer in the show notes. Start today for just one dollar. There's a lot there to pull from, right? And so I think it's very important that we recognize that this is not just a Toby problem, right? It is executive leadership at this company that is kind of collectively doing this right-wing push in Canadian politics, you know, influencing it in various different ways, whether it is through their posts, whether it is funding certain things, whether it is trying to kind of seed right-wing narratives into the political discourse that are being picked up by, you know, prominent politicians, political conservative activists, you know, things like this, right?

29:48SPEAKER_01:And then going back to what you were saying on the free speech thing, right? You know, we can't deny our merchant services because that would be a violation of people's commercial rights and speech rights and all this kind of stuff, you know, echoing what we hear from the right in the United States. I wonder what you make of the fact that, I believe it was last year, Shopify did actually shut down a store, Kanye West store, where he was selling t-shirts uh of a swastika.

30:12SPEAKER_01:Do you think that that indicated some real change of policy, or was it just because it was so prominent that they were finally forced to act and do something about Nazi merchandise or right-wing merchandise, um, even though they wouldn't usually act on anything like that?

30:26SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so that's a fun one because I actually reported on that at the time. And uh another outlet, the logic, beat me in publishing this scoop, which I'm still sore about, but they're really good there. Um, but basically, it wasn't because of the swastika that Shopify shut that store down. A lot of people just heard, okay, Shopify shut it down, so they did the right thing. You need to think about the logic behind it, right? Because if they're not shutting it down because of the swastika, that opens the door to another swastika incident.

30:59SPEAKER_00:But basically, an internal staff announcement, um, and I got my hands on this, as did the logic, they the it disclosed that the real reason they took down Kanye West's swastika website was because of a risk of fraud, not because of the swastika. So, even in that context, they weren't as concerned about this um neo-Nazi symbolism, and instead were just worried that, you know, this wasn't a good faith attempt to make money, was the actual quote. They were worried it was a stunt and quote, not a good faith attempt to make money.

31:39SPEAKER_00:So as long as your swastika is a good faith attempt to make money, then you're okay, I guess, arguably, based on the precedent here.

31:49SPEAKER_01:So basically, they were really only just worried that people might not receive their swastika t-shirts in the way that they had purchased through the Shopify store run by Kanye West.

31:59SPEAKER_00:Exactly. Yeah. So really, a really principled stance, you know, just great to see. Which is particularly interesting too, and and kind of horrifying because Harley Finkelstein is like a prominent Jewish entrepreneur. This is the president of Shopify. And um, he's made some public commentary supporting the state of Israel, for example. But like, you know, arguably things like this also are like a huge driver of anti-Semitism and a huge incident of anti-Semitism.

32:26SPEAKER_00:So it's it's odd that someone who clearly is comfortable advocating for certain ideologies with respect to, you know, supporting Israel, seemingly out of concern for the elements of it that are pro-Jewish, but is also not necessarily addressing these very anti-Semitic acts that they arguably had this not been shut down out of concern for fraud, would have taken a cut from. It's it's interesting.

33:01SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. And you know, we know that Kanye West has been like quite openly anti-Semitic in recent years. Um, and certainly, you know, providing merchant services to some of these types of stores that you're talking about are is basically funding, you know, the rise of anti-Semitism and these movements who are pushing anti-Semitism in the United States and and other parts of the world as well, right? You know, you know, you were talking about I'm not saying anything specific about libs of TikTok because I'm not very aware of like what it does beyond going after trans people and stuff.

33:31SPEAKER_00:That's basically it.

33:33SPEAKER_01:Yeah, okay. But like even in that case, it's like by allowing that person, that individual, that kind of like influencer, company, whatever, to use Shopify in order to sell hateful merchandise, it's not just allowing that kind of messaging to spread and people to wear it and things like that, but you're also allowing it to basically fund itself by selling through this platform, right? So you're enabling that kind of hatred to continue, whether it's against trans people, whether it's against Jewish people, like you know, whatever group is being targeted by these different uh you know, people, influencers, whatever using the platform, this is the effect of not having a stronger policy, as you're saying they used to have and then and then changed against the type of people who are using the store, which I think most people would feel is completely legitimate, right?

34:23SPEAKER_01:Like if someone is using a platform with hateful intent or to fund hateful activity, I think most people would agree that that is fine to take action against, certainly in Canada.

34:33SPEAKER_00:Yeah, absolutely. It's it's an odd positioning, and also one that I think that this is something you see so often with people who have these sorts of libertarian-esque ideologies underpinning capitalistic endeavors, is this idea that everything happens in a vacuum. You have no responsibility to society, nothing causes anything. Um, and everything is about making money. So, like, yeah, it doesn't matter if uh people are profiting off of, you know, swastika t-shirts, or as I've discovered, you know, Nazi memorabilia with swastikas all over it.

35:13SPEAKER_00:It doesn't matter as long as it's a good faith attempt to make money, because who cares? Like, I mean, it's either an apathy towards the societal impact of allowing these individuals to make money and, you know, also further spreading the symbolism as well. But also, uh, it's either apathy towards that or it is, I guess, being like kind of stupid and not understanding that we live in a society where things influence one another and we actually should have a degree of ownership over the impact of our actions.

35:48SPEAKER_01:Absolutely, absolutely. And so, you know, we've talked about kind of the development of these ideas and the company becoming, you know, increasingly vocal in the political views that it shares and kind of its degree of lobbying for right-wing political views in particular. But can you tell me how this works in practice? Like, how are we seeing the Canadian tech industry and these Canadian tech leaders start to try to ensure that the government is listening to them, is passing policies that align with their interests.

36:17SPEAKER_01:How are they pushing this agenda?

36:19SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so uh it's organized and uh very much uh they literally created an organization. Like, um, so it started out. There was a WhatsApp group chat where these very important special boys would talk about how they uh, you know, had all these great ideas for how Canadian society could should work. Because, you know, developing an app makes you an expert in everything, right? Like, obviously. Um, and so they were getting frustrated that they weren't having um enough of a say, I guess, in our society.

36:52SPEAKER_00:And they had all these good ideas in this group chat, a WhatsApp group chat that included several Shopify executives and other sort of tech leaders. And then they went public with this group chat. The group chat was called Build Canada. And uh this is based on reporting from The Logic that did a really good um breakdown of all of this and the process that led to them creating this actual group. But they went public with this group called Build Canada.

37:17SPEAKER_00:And this group is a website, effectively, where all of these primarily dudes who are uh primarily, I'd assume, fairly wealthy because they used to publish the names of all of these guys that were writing these um memos on their Build Canada website, which is sort of the policies that they're advocating for that they publish. That's the whole purpose of the website is to publish these memos with ideas that government can then pick up and implement into action.

37:49SPEAKER_00:More on that in a moment. But basically, they used to have all the guys who were writing these memos listed on the website. I took a look at that and I counted. There were more men named Mike than there were women on the list. And it was almost all CEOs, founders, you know, just like really people who are in touch with the average person. Um, so more or less, it is a bunch of wealthy tech bros who are writing policy proposals for government. And, you know, this brain trust came up with some really great ideas, like, you know, cutting taxes for the rich through capital gains reform, or, you know, um, changing our immigration system so that dependents and spouses have to be considered on their own merits, which is just like horrifyingly cruel.

38:45SPEAKER_00:Yeah, just like really cool stuff like that. And but what's interesting about this organization is that not only are these memos, I would argue the ideas suck for the most part. I mean, every now and then a you know, broken clock is right twice a day or whatever. Um, so you know, I'm not saying they're all gonna be awful forever, but a lot of them suck, in my opinion, is the weight that they hold in our actual politics and the people who are listening to them.

39:15SPEAKER_00:So there's all these tech bros involved, like Toby, like Harley, who's the president of Shopify. I believe Kaz has also been involved, but I'd want to check that. But basically, these guys have the ear of significant levels of government. So the um Outlet D Smog published a piece where they found um they reached out to the CEO of Build Canada, Lucy Hargreaves, and she told them that the prime minister's office, the prime minister of Canada, his office has called them to ask about their memos.

39:51SPEAKER_00:Several prominent conservatives have shared Build Canada um proposals or ads on Twitter and engaged with them. And also, you know, through an access to information request that an independent journalist named Dean Beebe filled out that he shared with me, um, I was able to see a meeting that Toby, the CEO of Shopify, held with the prime minister, Mark Carney, in January of this year. So we know that this is someone with a degree of access that is significant.

40:18SPEAKER_00:And in the context of that meeting, Mark Carney, um, in the briefing notes ahead of that meeting, it's acknowledged that the government reached out to Shopify for to consult them on a tax credit that they were working on. So, you know, these are not people that are just floating ideas into the ether with no impact as a result. These are people whose ideas have the ear of government. And the Ty, which is another Canadian news outlet, did a breakdown of these memos alongside uh Mark Carney's policies and found that about 20 of the policies that Mark Kearney has enacted are extremely similar to ideas that are published on this Build Canada website.

41:06SPEAKER_00:So these are people who have real impact in terms of trying to and arguably successfully influencing Canadian politics and doing so as a direct result of the access and money that they have due to their extreme privilege in our society. And that to me is anti-democratic. It's the same sort of unfairness that we talk about. You know, we laugh at the proposal that Toby Lutke uh laid out, wherein people get more acts, more of a say in our democracy based on the level of income tax they pay.

41:42SPEAKER_00:But arguably, this is the same mentality. It's people having more of a say in influencing our politics. I mean, I don't know about you, Paris, but Mark Carney's not calling me up asking me about the things that I publish. Um, unfortunately not. Yeah, yeah. So it's like these people have a different level of access and say in our democracy. And it's arguably tied to that wealth and access. And um, I don't know, I think that that's really anti-democratic.

42:10SPEAKER_00:And I'm very concerned about what they're using that power to try to turn our politics into.

42:17SPEAKER_01:Definitely. No, I completely agree with that, right? And I'm not talking to Mark Carney or liberals about policy, but we can see that it's definitely influencing the type of policy that they are taking, right? You know, you've talked about how there's something like 20 policies that it seems like, you know, reflect things that were published by Build Canada and pushed by Build Canada. Just to give an example, you know, one of the first things that Mark Carney did when he became the Prime Minister of Canada was to remove a planned increase to the capital gains tax, which was something that was really aggressively motivating the tech industry, right?

42:50SPEAKER_01:And you know, you've given us the things.

42:51SPEAKER_00:Oh, they were posting about it non-stop. Yeah.

42:54SPEAKER_01:Totally. They were obsessing about it, right? And and you've given us the context for how we got to this point. But I think it's also worth adding in there that part of the reason it feels like that the tech industry started to get more politically active in Canada and start pushing for particular policies is because they were getting fed up, basically, with the policy of the Trudeau, Justin Trudeau liberal government, and in particular, this planned increase to the capital gains tax.

43:22SPEAKER_01:And initially we're trying to push for a conservative government that was going to deliver, you know, these policies that uh they were advocating through Build Canada and and other means, but then shifted to backing Mark Carney, um, you know, someone who already had a long history of working with the tech industry. And it really seems that that has paid off for them, right?

43:43SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah, definitely. I mean, my understanding is that Mark Carney was offered, yeah, Shopify offered Mark Carney a job as their president in 2020. So, like, there's certainly um an amicable relationship there to that degree. And you know, they if they We're offering him a job just six years ago. Um, and I I did personally, just as a political watcher, find it really interesting how loud Toby and Harley and all of these tech guys were in the lead up to um, you know, amid these capital gains tax increase, um, and ultimately what ended up being the lead up to the election.

44:22SPEAKER_00:Although I think initially when they were doing all this, it was before Justin Trudeau's resignation and before we knew an election was on the horizon. But yeah, it was really interesting the way that their furious criticism dried up when Mark Carney won the liberal leadership. And I think that that should have been one of the early warning signs that Mark Carney may not have been the ally of the everyday man, the uh rescuer of Canadians that uh maybe he initially sold himself as.

44:51SPEAKER_00:So I think that Mark Carney is someone who very much buys into a lot of the tech bro hype, a lot of their messaging. Um, it's evident through a lot of the stuff he's implemented, through his, you know, AI policies. He's mentioned Harley in speeches, he's meeting with Toby. Like, I think that they got quiet because they got what they wanted and continue to get what they want. And it's scary because, like, as I mentioned, it's not just Toby. Like, Toby is the way he posts is very Chud-like.

45:24SPEAKER_00:But Harley also, in the wake of Toby, and Harley again is the Shopify president, in the wake of Toby arguing that, you know, a bunch of people should lose their right to vote, like the poor pensioners. Harley was defending him, saying, Oh, it's remarkable, he's unshakable. Um, you know, responding to people claiming that Toby was being tall poppied, which is this argument that, you know, people cut down the tallest poppy in their midst, which basically they're saying we're all jealous of Toby's success as Canadians.

45:56SPEAKER_00:And um, you know, so we have to cut down the most successful Canadian in our midst. Um, you know, so Harley's like backing him even on this. He's he's online defending him, and is like also I saw him do an NPC meme in response to um a drag for Palestine event. Uh Harley Finkelstein posted this meme saying, I support the current thing with a caricature of an NPC. So, like, you know, these are guys that are very much like arguably right-wing shit posters on Twitter, and they have a real ear of power, political power in Canada.

46:35SPEAKER_00:And if I can just take a moment, because you have this US audience, so many people in the states I think don't really care about what happens to Canada. And I get it, you guys don't have to think about us. I know, and I know we have to think about you way more. But the number of progressives that I see taking money from Shopify for ad reads, for example, makes me want to blow my brains out because you guys are taking money from our Elon Musk, basically.

47:09SPEAKER_00:And while you're doing all of this content creation and journalism and commentary that supports progressive values, you're taking money and advertising for an organization that has executives who are actively influencing or at least attempting. And I think we've proven through the arguments that we've laid out in the course of this podcast, are succeeding, arguably, in interfering with our politics and influencing it in this more right-wing direction.

47:39SPEAKER_00:You're you're actually hurting Canadians when you do that. You're hurting the Canadians who align with the viewpoints that you might have that you um perpet to hold as progressives. So I really hope you'll think about that because you guys should feel the same way about Toby that you do about Elon Musk, if you give a single shit about Canada.

48:00SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I feel very frustrated when I see people kind of criticize Twitter X or criticize Substack, but then use Shopify or don't say anything about Shopify or use it as their store platform where they're selling things, or as you say, kind of do ad reads for it. And, you know, as though that is not a company that's kind of in line with those other ones, that there should be a much more critical stance taken toward. And I did want to ask you about that kind of difference, right?

48:29SPEAKER_01:Because I feel like we often focus on the influence of the tech industry in the United States. And I think that, you know, you've shown very clearly that we have powerful tech figures in Canada who are very influential on our current government and the policy directions that we're taking. Um, or, you know, in Canada we hear about the pressure of US tech companies and what they're placing on the Canadian government, but we don't hear nearly as much about what our own tech elite is doing.

48:54SPEAKER_01:And I wonder why you think that is and why say Canadian media doesn't focus more on what we're seeing the tech industry here in Canada doing and the effects of you know their lobbying and their influence.

49:07SPEAKER_00:Part of me wishes I knew because it's cowardice. You know, I mean, I I do actually sometimes wonder if there's a degree of Canada being smaller and there being more, you know, uh hesitancy to critique certain rich and powerful individuals because you might be more likely to run into them. Like when I worked at CTV News as a producer, Harley Finkelstein came into the newsroom sometimes to do interviews and hits. And I'd like to see him walk through and you know, like that's not to say necessarily, like obviously tons of different newsmakers come into newsrooms, and it doesn't mean you're beholden to them in any to any degree.

49:48SPEAKER_00:But I just I wonder if it plays a role in people being more timid when they feel as though, oh, I'm critiquing one of the few good Canadian companies that cares about Canada. And and I don't think that that myth that they're buying into, should that be the logic fueling their cowardice, is accurate. Like these guys, I don't think they actually really care about Canada as much as they they love to talk about how much they love Canada online. But if you look at the policies they're pushing for, they're not policies that are kind to Canadians, they're kind to some Canadians, being the ultra wealthy.

50:25SPEAKER_00:And so it's and often to at the expense of the rest of us. I mean, Toby's freaking advocating for a bunch of us to lose our right to vote. So, you know, I just it would be nice to see our media grow some teeth when it comes to these companies. I have been reporting on them and their antics for years. I did so when I was at global news. You know, I I didn't see a lot of critical reporting on them from global after I left. I saw very few people pick up on these stories of how Toby and all these guys are trying to influence Canadian politics through Build Canada.

51:02SPEAKER_00:Um the Walrus wrote about it, the Tai, uh, the logic, the breach. But as I'm saying all these newsrooms, I bet you're not a single American uh listener, and probably very few Canadian listeners have heard of them because these are smaller, more indie shops. When Toby first posted about disenfranchising millions of Canadians and endorsed that idea, I searched global news, CTV News, CBC News, and the Globe and Mail. It was at like it was a while after he had posted.

51:37SPEAKER_00:They had like at least a full day to write an article on this. None of them had published anything. And I posted that and it got like you know, a lot of engagement because a lot of Canadians were outraged by what Toby had said and were shocked that it hadn't made the news in Canada. Like these are, for again, American listeners who might not know, some of the like these are the biggest news outlets in Canada and they weren't touching this. And it wasn't until I believe at least two full days after I had first highlighted this um post from Toby that they finally did write articles about it.

52:16SPEAKER_00:It was like the Tuesday afternoon when CBC finally had a piece up about this and Toby had posted it over the weekend. So it was just really shocking. And even then I saw some prominent Canadian journalists um calling it a summer snooze story. And it's only a snooze story if you don't understand and haven't bothered to pay attention to the politics that these men are influencing and the power they have to do so in our society, which is something we should all be paying attention to.

52:50SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's really frustrating to see, right? And it it even reminds me about how many US media outlets will ignore the types of things that Elon Musk is posting, you know, on Twitter on his social media platform that are just outrageous. Like, you know, incredibly racist, very fascist, and and pushing far-right movements, and so much of it can be ignored. And then as soon as he says we're going to Mars in five or ten years, then that gets like full headlines, right?

53:15SPEAKER_01:You know, it's and you know, I'm not surprised that there's a similar treatment of the tech elite in Canada, but I think it is very disappointing when we can see them wielding their power, right? And on that point, I guess, we were talking about the capital gains tax increase, which Mark Carney rolled back again because of pressure from the tech industry. Mark Kearney also rolled back the digital services tax, and in some places that was framed as something that was done as a result of Trump, but there was also reporting that showed that the domestic tech industry wanted that gone as well and did not like it.

53:46SPEAKER_01:And it seemed to me like it was the Trump aspect of that was a bit more of an excuse, right, in order to get rid of it. Obviously, we have this uh, you know, extremely pro-AI policy that Mark Carney unveiled uh in recent months. And of course, um, you know, I did an episode on that with uh Hadrian, which people can go back and listen to uh where we where we dug into that. But again, you know, this is very much uh echoing the things that the tech industry wants to see in policy and is funneling billions of dollars toward them in order to achieve uh, you know, what they want to achieve.

54:18SPEAKER_01:And now we've also seen the government roll back Canadian content rules for streaming services. This one I don't think is coming as much from the domestic tech industry as from the negotiations over the trade agreement with the United States. But again, it's this consistent rollback of a policy framework that was trying to be put in place in order to bring some control over the tech industry and over these major tech companies. And we see Mark Carney rolling it back.

54:41SPEAKER_01:And so my final question to you then is what do you think we should make of this new government that has been in place now for uh, you know, for for quite a while, for over a year? Uh, you know, Mark Carney has has been our prime minister, has been, you know, wielding uh, you know, the reins of power in Canada. What do you think we should make of that government and in particular its relationship to the tech industry in Canada and and you know its its position toward it?

55:08SPEAKER_00:It's our government is a coward and a placator of the tech industry, and frankly, of most industries that are rewarded in terms of like the capitalist iteration of society that we're currently living under. Like our government right now is extremely pro-corporate, extremely um, it's really using the current moment of the Trump threat as a sort of shock doctrine technique to prey on Canadians' fears, to be able to enact policies that are extremely pro-corporate, total disregard for the environment, if anything, well, more than that, it's actively harming the environment.

55:54SPEAKER_00:Things that I don't see the economic case for, but we're being told that these will apparently help us to diversify away from the United States, like having oil pipelines that the US or that, sorry, Canada will never profit from unless the world careens into full-blown climate disaster and everyone still wants oil 30 years from now to the same degree that we, you know, consume it today, which would be horrific. So basically, this government is doing all kinds of pro-corporate stuff that make me genuinely question whether it cares about the everyday people or only cares about these rich and powerful individuals, which is, once again, precisely why it matters what those rich people are saying and doing and musing about.

56:40SPEAKER_00:Because as long as our government proves itself to be to have its lips sewn to the assholes of the ultra-rich in our society, then like we're gonna keep seeing policies that may or may not reflect the musings of those individuals. So their musings matter because they are having a disproportionate impact on our society right now. And uh, I would like to see the government grow a spine and actually put its elbows up for Canada, meaning actual everyday Canadians and not just the wealthiest among us.

57:19SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that that's quite an image to leave listeners with. And I don't mean the elbows up, uh, unfortunately.

57:25SPEAKER_00:Yeah, sorry, maybe a little graphic, but yeah.

57:28SPEAKER_01:But you know, it's the reality of the situation, right? It is.

57:31SPEAKER_00:It's a human centipede of tech bros and politicians. It's horrible.

57:36SPEAKER_01:Terrible. It's so terrible. Um, but you know, like this is a government that came to power promising to be acting for Canadians, you know, against Trump, and that motivated a lot of people. And what we see is that, you know, there's less and less uh against Trump than maybe people expected. And there's certainly a whole lot of using the threat of Trump in order to help so many of these industries, including uh the domestic tech industry with a bunch of investment and pro AI policy and all the other things that we have to do.

58:03SPEAKER_00:Data centers and yeah.

58:05SPEAKER_01:Absolutely.

58:05SPEAKER_00:And using those to create more of a market for natural gas, which we are going to be, you know, extracting more and more of. Anyway, sorry. I'm this is very important Canadian stuff, okay, to all your US listeners.

58:19SPEAKER_01:And it's so dreadful, right? But luckily we do have the data center opposition coming here as well. You know, we had uh, I think a couple moratoriums passed locally so far, but things are heading in the right direction on that front. And hopefully, you know, that people power is going to force the government to uh to have to respond instead of just responding to these uh wealthy tech CEOs uh that they're so keen to listen to at the moment. Um, Rachel, it was great to get your insights on all of this to help the listeners learn more about Shopify, you know, a company that doesn't get the negative attention that I think it deserves, but that more people need to be aware of.

58:58SPEAKER_01:Thanks so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate it.

59:00SPEAKER_00:Thank you for having me. It was a blast.

59:04SPEAKER_01:Rachel Gilmore is an independent journalist, and her newsletter is called Bubble Pop. Tech Won's Save Us is made in partnership with The Nation magazine and is hosted by me, Paris Marks. Production is by Kylie Hewson. Tech won't save us relies on the support of listeners like you to keep providing critical perspectives on the tech industry. You can join hundreds of other supporters by going to patreon.com slash tech won't save us and making a pledge of your own.

59:22SPEAKER_01:Thanks for listening and make sure to come back next week.