Lutke’s Dangerous Musings are Only the Tip of the Iceberg

August 25, 2026 , Brooke Jeffrey , Leave a comment

It’s difficult to know where to begin when something as appalling as tech titan Tobias Lutke’s thoughts on voting come to light.

For starters, one might have thought that someone who came to Canada from his native Germany would have been particularly appreciative of the wide-open freedom and egalitarian political culture here, to say nothing of the welcoming immigrant reception society. Lutke was, after all, born in West Germany in 1980, nearly a decade before the fall of the Iron Curtain that had divided his country, so he could hardly have been unaware of the draconian society next door in the East. He was also someone without a university degree. Yet he was accepted here as a young man and managed to start his own hi-tech company, eventually becoming the billionaire head of Shopify, a massive e-commerce operation still headquartered in this country.

But gratitude is not on the menu. Apparently he did it all himself, a la Margaret Thatcher and Elon Musk.[i] State support for accessible postsecondary education, health care, welfare and other elements of the social safety net, and regulatory protection for Canadian enterprise, were seemingly irrelevant for him and for all of the Canadian workers he hired on his way to the top.

This leads to another obvious thought about the man’s judgment. Clearly he was a gifted individual, at least with respect to computer programming, and, like Musk, he is confident that he is the smartest person in any room. This may even be true, although one has to wonder what a room with both Lutke and Musk in it would sound like, never mind one with Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Peter Thiele, to name but a few more of that ilk. But as Musk’s disastrous time in politics demonstrated in spades, being a computer genius does not lead to any useful insights about the appropriate role of government in a democracy or even how to behave in public service.

In fact, Musk’s chaotic 129 days in Washington led to serious problems of governance and the major destruction of operational infrastructure before he finally was obliged to leave in disgrace.[ii] His own business operations, like Tesla, actually suffered as a result of that ill-fated foray, but not for long. Even now he and his cohorts enjoy unprecedented power and influence with the Trump administration, which has twisted regulatory regimes and agencies in knots to oblige the titans’ personal financial ambitions.[iii] From defence contracts to NASA projects and the banning of Chinese electric cars, Trump’s efforts to keep the huge hi-tech financial contributions to his MAGA campaign coming are visible everywhere.

This is particularly significant since Americans have almost no limitations on election or party financial contributions, and it is literally possible to buy an election. Both the multimillionaires Mitt Romney and Donald Trump essentially bankrolled their own candidacies for the Republican presidential nomination. Elon Musk notoriously contributed an unprecedented sum to that party to fend off the surging Kamala Harris in 2024, and he is reportedly doing so again to bolster the Republicans’ sagging fortunes in the upcoming mid-terms.[iv] (Thankfully this is one element of the Americans’ anti-democratic saga that is unlikely to seep into Canada, primarily because former prime minister Jean Chretien long ago introduced a series of restrictions on election spending to counter just such developments as those south of the border.)

Musk did learn one valuable lesson from his disastrous time on the inside of the corridors of power. It’s much easier to kibbutz from outside. And he has continued to do so with a vengeance. For those who thought he was solely America’s problem, let us not forget the infamous 2022 tweet that compared Hitler with Justin Trudeau.[v] However even Musk was obliged to retract that one, and a few more of his most offensive musings, such as his March 2025 post on X that declared “Stalin, Mao, and Hitler didn’t murder millions of people. Their public sector employees did.” But that takedown was due to visceral public opposition that otherwise might have damaged his financial bottom line, not a change of heart, as he later made clear.[vi]

Even more distressing for the future of democracy is the fact that the tech titans, despite their ignorance of politics, feel empowered to speak out on anything at all to do with democratic institutions. Take, for example, Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to end fact-checking on his Facebook/Meta platform, because he believes in unfettered free speech and not so much in democracy,[vii] or the outspoken libertarian views of Peter Thiel, who almost single-handedly made J.D. Vance vice-president. Even more bizarre is the thinking of Thiel’s fellow PayPal guru Alex Karp, who has written a book in which he says the optimal government would function like a small startup, run by a fearless leader who is “not afraid to break things.”[viii] Not surprisingly this unprecedented behaviour has led to the emergence of an entire academic subfield devoted to studying the rise of what has been termed “technofascism”, or the views of the far right hi-tech intellectual elite, a group that is estimated to be worth more than $1 trillion in the US alone.

Which brings us to the unfortunate musings of Canadian tech titan Toby Lutke on voting rights. Certainly his thinking fits right in with his American cohorts’ views of the world. Hardly surprising, then, that Elon Musk rushed to agree with Lutke on X. For those who might have missed it, Mr. Lutke has concluded that seniors should not have the right to vote because they are “not productive.” In a post on his social media site he argued they should be guaranteed a minimum income and then classified as “dependents,” like children, and lose the right to vote. [ix]One wonders if ice floes are not the next logical step in his thinking….

But it gets worse. A self-described “retired banking executive” responded positively to Lutke’s idea with one of his own – take away the vote from anyone who does not pay taxes. At a minimum this would disenfranchise students, caregivers, the disabled, (including presumably war veterans), the unhoused, and millions of low-wage earners whose income is too low to pay taxes after deductions. At the same time, this throwback to the 19^th century suggested allowing multiple votes for individuals depending on their income – from one to five votes per person, with the techno elites naturally benefiting from the five votes. Lutke replied that he thought this was “a good idea.” As Fortune editor Nick Lichtenberg rightly pointed out, this system would result in “a fivefold multiplier on political power concentrated in the hands of people already holding disproportionate economic power.”[x]

One might be inclined to wonder if Mr. Lutke’s focus on voting is not really about productivity at all, but rather stems from an unhappiness with the way federal elections have been going lately in Canada. If that is the case, then he certainly appears to have done his homework. By excluding seniors he would likely be handing the Poilievre Conservatives a real run at victory, albeit not a majority. After the 2025 election, for example, Elections Canada once again reported that seniors were far more likely to vote (77%) than young people (55%).[xi] Meanwhile numerous public opinion polls have concluded that older demographics overwhelmingly voted Liberal, while young men in particular flocked to the Conservatives.[xii]

Of course there is a slight bit of good news in this outrageous story. Thankfully, a great many Canadians have expressed their outrage at Lutke’s idea and they apparently are not all seniors. Newspapers have been swamped with letters from furious citizens who know innately that one person, one vote, is a fundamental principle of democracy and anything less is unacceptable. Frankly, if this uproar over voting rights were not in evidence it would suggest there is little or no hope that Canada will remain a liberal democracy for much longer. Put another way, simply defending the universal right to vote is setting the bar very low indeed for a healthy functioning democracy.

Presumably one reason why so many Canadians immediately felt Lutke’s proposal was so clearly wrong was because the right to vote affects people directly. But there is so much else that is essential for democracy to function, and many of the principles and concepts are far less immediate or tangible. Yet citizens must be aware of all of these fundamentals if democracy is to thrive. Sadly, there is growing evidence that many Canadians have only the slimmest grasp on most democratic principles. In addition, they are rarely well-informed on political issues and are easily misled by propaganda, conspiracy theories and false news. Put another way, civic illiteracy, even among the otherwise educated elites, has been declining for decades and is now likely at an all-time low.

This too is hardly surprising. To begin with, recent studies have demonstrated that fully one-third of Canadians do not recall having learned anything at all about civics in elementary or high school This includes the basic principles of democracy, the way institutions and governments work, the federal system, the role and responsibilities of citizens, or even how to discuss controversial issues and evaluate news articles.[xiii]

This complete ignorance of the basics was on full display during the global pandemic. Far too many Canadians followed the American lead and placed their faith in conspiracy theories (Bill Gates has planted brain chips in the vaccine; this virus is really just the flu; vaccines cause cancer and autism, etc) and actively rejected state guidelines on masking and vaccine mandates. But the nadir came with the so-called Truckers’ Convoy, when its leaders demonstrated a truly farcical lack of understanding of the Canadian political system:

One of the protest leaders drew up a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) which many followers signed, calling on the Senate and the Governor General to form a government with the protesters, presumably by overthrowing the duly elected government that had just been returned in an election. Only one side –the protesters — had signed the document but this did not seem to deter them from calling it a MOU.
Another spokesperson for the protesters called for their representatives to “sit at a table with the Conservatives, the NDP and the Bloc as a coalition,” as if elected MPs from political parties could join forces with external groups. [xiv]
Still another protest leader called on the Senate and Governor General to form a committee of some sort to overrule Parliament? The House of Commons? and rescind all vaccine mandates, (most of which were provincial).
Many individual protesters carried copies of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, demanding that their “rights” be restored.
Protesters and other misinformed supporters bombarded the Governor General with thousands of calls demanding she dissolve Parliament, unaware she has no such power.

Perhaps most importantly, the protesters seemed to feel their views were mainstream and widely supported by most of their fellow citizens, despite the fact that the People’s Party of Canada, the only party that expressed any remotely similar views, received less than 5% of the popular vote and won no seats, a point underlined by Eric Van Rythoven of Carleton University in an analysis of the protesters’ many misguided beliefs.[xv] Such ignorance naturally leaves those citizens vulnerable to all manner of deliberate efforts to mislead and undermine their faith in their government and its institutions.

The reality of this type of threat being posed by foreign actors has been the subject of parliamentary committee hearings and RCMP investigations. They have found evidence of attempted tampering in federal elections by countries such as India, China and Russia in order to influence and/or confuse voters. Evidence of deliberately misleading material has also been found related to the upcoming referendum vote in Alberta, where it has been attributed to a sophisticated Russian campaign to disrupt and undermine citizen confidence.[xvi] But at least on such a specific threat it is possible to attempt to alert and educate individuals, hopefully mitigating against potential damage.

Another threat to democracy that targets such vulnerable citizens is much harder to address, namely their misguided reliance on social media as a source of news and information. Although the Americans are in worse shape in this regard, Canadians are not far behind. While only 45% of Americans trust mainstream media, some 51% of Canadians do. More revealing is the breakdown of that latter number, revealing a significant age divide. More than 65% of older Canadians trust mainstream media compared with only 43% of those 18-34. Worse still, fully 88% of Americans under thirty rely on social media for “news”, of which 33% rely on “influencers.” By contrast a somewhat better but nevertheless worrisome 41% of young Canadians rely entirely on social media for their news.[xvii]

An even more recent threat to the civically illiterate has arisen almost exclusively due to the behaviour of American president Donald Trump. Until his arrival on the American scene, the notion of a leader utilizing deliberate deception and blatant disregard for democratic principles was unthinkable in a democracy. Such behaviour was typically confined to autocratic regimes or those formerly democratic regimes, such as Hungary under Victor Orban, that were being dismantled by an elected but illiberal leader.

Trump has dramatically upended that set of conventions. While dispensing his own wild accusations and misdirection, he has managed to turn the tables on not only the mainstream media but elected politicians, legitimate interest groups and anyone else who disagrees with him, accusing them of “fake news.” He has even set up his own social media platform, ironically named Truth Social, to counter their attempts to inform and educate the citizenry. The sheer volume and depth of his attacks on democratic institutions, conventions and the constitution is mind boggling.

He has played on the ignorance of those unable to evaluate this behaviour because of their civic illiteracy. As J D Vance recently commented, if Watergate were to take place today it would be a two-day wonder of little consequence. What the vice-president no doubt meant is that it would have been dismissed as a witch hunt by Democrats, or lost among the many other protests and accusations made by a range of legitimate actors concerned about outrageous violations of democratic principles. Or, as Seth Stern of the Freedom of the Press Foundation lamented, after Trump’s latest attempt to earn money by charging for advance notice of his Truth Social posts:

A president selling priority access to news he himself generates for the benefit of a private company he controls is so blatantly corrupt and unconstitutional that it would have been hard to even fathom just a few years ago….

This phenomenon of an illiberal leader unravelling a democracy has been studied in depth in various regimes by Chicago University professors Robert Gulotty and Zhaotian Luo, who have come to several unsettling conclusions. First and foremost, they believe it will only be possible to “save” a threatened democracy when some of the leader’s own supporters desert him. “Democracy’s last line of defence is not the opposition”, they argue, “but the incumbent’s own supporters. It is they who must ultimately defend democracy, since everyone else already opposes the person in power.” [xviii] But as they point out, this will not be easy because these supporters are precisely the worst cases of civic illiteracy.

In the US, the January 6^th debacle on Capitol Hill demonstrated this problem perfectly, with many of the participants actually believing, mistakenly, that they were defending the constitution. Another problem, the two academics note, is that in general most of the violations of civil liberties and democratic principles are more removed from the supporters. “Those voters do not directly see democracy backsliding. Instead, they see investigations, indictments, alarmed experts and partisan congressional hearings. From their perspective, it can be hard to distinguish a president under siege by a hostile press from one who is genuinely undermining democracy.”[xix]

This brings us once again to Tobias Lutke’s clearly undemocratic vote proposal and the situation in Canada. While there have not yet been any polls demonstrating the level of support for Lutke’s plan by age group, there are other potentially worrying numbers already in play. A recent Nanos poll, for example, found a shocking “Forty-seven percent of those aged 18 to 29 say a strong leader who does not have to bother with Parliament and elections would be a good way of governing.” In addition, and even more alarming, “only 43% say democracy is always preferable. Thirty-six percent believe a non-democratic government could be preferable in some circumstances, while 13% say the type of government does not matter to them.”[xx] Needless to say the numbers are completely reversed for older age groups, who have far better knowledge of and greater confidence in democratic institutions.

In one sense these numbers are not surprising, since numerous polls over the past two years have demonstrated the significant divide between younger and older Canadian voters on the important political issues of the day. The 2025 election clearly focused that divide, with older Canadians primarily concerned about the potential impact of Donald Trump’s threats, while younger Canadians continued to prioritize cost-of-living issues and paid almost no attention to the Trump factor. Even more telling is the fact that this divide overrode both gender and partisan support considerations.[xxi]

This divide has not only been identified but highlighted in the work of UBC professor Paul Kershaw and his “Generation Squeeze” lab, which has proposed numerous policy solutions to reduce the unintentional but real generational bias in existing programs such as the federal OAS.[xxii] This divide has also led Mike Moffat, former Chief Innovation Fellow to the federal government and founding director of the University of Ottawa’s “Missing Middle” initiative, to argue that recent research conducted in many western economies demonstrates that such policy change is also essential to promote economic growth.[xxiii] This point was actually made indirectly by Tobias Lutke when he said “let people with a stake in the future decide,”[xxiv] and suggested that seniors do not have the same interests as younger generations since they are more concerned with wealth preservation than production. Nevertheless, as Moffat concludes, policy change is a separate matter from democratic rights, and Lutke was entirely in the wrong to suggest that depriving any citizens of a vote would be an appropriate solution in a democracy.

At the end of the day the most important takeaway from the Lutke affair should be that Canada needs to do a far better job of educating the younger generations about democracy. The lack of civic education should be a concern for educators and provincial administrators, but also for the federal government, which has all the resources necessary to launch a mass information campaign on the operation of Parliament, the federal system of government and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, either directly or by providing grants to provincial education systems to reinforce civics courses. Elections Canada could be charged with proactively engaging young Canadians about the electoral system and voting rights and procedures. Ideally, civil society, including interest groups and the media, will also play a more prominent role in such education.

As Carleton professor Van Rythoven concludes:

Ultimately, Canadians will get an education in civics one way or another. What matters is where the education comes from. Will it come from a robust and informed curriculum that teaches citizens about basic institutions like parliamentary democracy, charter rights and the difference between federal and provincial jurisdiction? Or will we simply leave it to YouTube, Facebook and other social media platforms to fill the void? [xxv]

[i] Thatcher, for example, was famous for declaring she succeeded on her own merits despite her humble origins as a shopkeeper’s daughter, ignoring entirely the fact she received a government scholarship to Oxford. Musk, meanwhile, describes himself as a self-made man despite his wealthy family background and his parents having loaned him the money to start his first enterprise.

[ii] https://www.ms.now/top-stories/latest/elon-musk-exit-trail-of-failures-rcna209977

[iii] https://www.bbcselect.com/ca/watch/trump-and-the-tech-titans/

[iv] https://www.ksl.com/article/news/politics/harris-funds-advertising-as-elon-musk-cuts-check-to-republicans/51579659

[v] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/feb/17/elon-musk-criticised-for-comparing-justin-trudeau-to-adolf-hitler-tweet-auschwitz

[vi] https://www.indy100.com/celebrities/musk-hitler-socialist-fact-check

[vii] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/07/technology/mark-zuckerberg-meta-free-speech.html

[viii] https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-libertarian-tech-titan-peter-thiel-helped-make-jd-vance-the-republican-kingmakers-influence-is-growing-261856

[ix] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/shopify-ceo-endorses-idea-to-give-more-votes-to-wealthy-canadians-9.7286688

[x] https://fortune.com/2026/07/27/shopify-ceo-voting-rights-stripping-americans-19th-century/

[xi] https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=res&dir=rec/eval/pes2025/evt&document=p1&lang=e

[xii] https://globalnews.ca/news/11153872/canada-election-results-demographics-exit-polls/

[xiii] https://abacusdata.ca/canadians-lack-basics-of-civic-education/