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Front Burner Transcript for February 13, 2025

Host: Jayme Poisson

[Music: Theme]

JAYME POISSON: Hey, everybody. I'm Jayme Poisson. The image of American tech titans front and centre at Donald Trump's inauguration. Zuckerberg, Bezos, Elon. It's hard for me to get out of my head, mostly because it's so in-your-face, captures the rightward shift in politics and culture that's happened in recent years. Here at home, Canadian tech leaders have also been making this move to the right. And some of them have been part of a project to develop a roadmap for their vision of this country. Today on the show, I want to talk about the similarities and differences between what's happening here and in the U.S., and why some of Canada's most powerful millionaires and billionaires say they feel betrayed by the Liberals and excited about Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives. Catherine McIntyre is a reporter with The Logic. She recently published this great piece that dives into all of this and more. Catherine, hey, it's great to have you on the show.

CATHERINE MCINTYRE: Hi, Jayme. Great to be here.

JP: So, let's start where you begin your reporting with this WhatsApp group titled "Build Canada" that you have reported includes some of this country's most high-profile leaders in the technology sector. I know that shortly after your story was published, they turned the group into like a website. But, can you talk to me about who is in that original group and the kinds of things that they were discussing in it?

CATHERINE MCINTYRE: Yeah. So, my colleagues and I learned last month about this group of tech entrepreneurs that was essentially drumming up policy ideas meant to influence the next federal government. So, folks kind of brainstorming these ideas where people like Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke and some of his fellow Shopify executives. There was John Ruffolo, a prominent Canadian tech investor.

SOUNDCLIP

JOHN RUFFOLO: We have a government that's not at work. We're doing a side show while we have the most significant risk to the Canadian economy that I've seen in my entire career.

CATHERINE MCINTYRE: And yeah, dozens of, of other entrepreneurs and investors.

JP: And just tell me more about, you know, what their vision was for the country, and now, this website. Like, what's the purpose of this website?

CATHERINE MCINTYRE: Yeah. So, we were told initially before this website had launched that they were effectively coming up with ways to make Canada a better place, which is very vague. But, you know, given the members of the group, it's not surprising that they were really focused on creating a more business-friendly environment in Canada. But they were also discussing things like immigration and transportation and health care, kind of a range of, of topics. And beyond just kind of thinking of discussing ways to improve the country and all these different kind of industries in Canada, they were really trying to find a way to create policies and, and get them implemented, ultimately.

JP: I know that they have said, or some of them have said, that this "Build Canada" project is non-partisan. But do you think that that's like an honest framing of it?

CATHERINE MCINTYRE: I mean, it is non-partisan in the sense that anyone, any political party, any lawmaker, can look at this website and pull ideas from it. But, you know, we know that some of the folks leading this initiative, like Tobi Lutke, for example, they've been extremely vocal in the last few months about their support for the Conservatives and the Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, and also their kind of growing disdain for the Liberals.

JP: Tell me more about that, because I can't help but wonder exactly what changed for many of these people. Is it fair for me to say that many of them had pretty long-standing and public affiliations with the federal Liberal Party and Justin Trudeau personally?

SOUNDCLIP

JUSTIN TRUDEAU: Anyone out there who ever said snowboarders can't amount to anything, Tobi and I get to be the counterexample on that.

JP: Tobi, for example. But a bunch of them, right?

CATHERINE MCINTYRE: Yeah. Yeah, that's totally fair. If you go back a decade to when the Liberal government was first elected, Canada's tech community was really hopeful. They were really excited about this new leadership. The government was talking a lot about innovation at the time. They were saying things like the future success of all Canadians depended on it. They were setting aside lots of money to boost innovation and, you know, support venture capital, and investing in the country. And kind of the, the one big thing or one of the big things that the government did that really encouraged these tech sector leaders was set up these economic strategy tables, which were led by business and tech folks that were essentially meant to produce policy ideas for the Liberal government on a range of industries, and in Canada. So, there was, yeah, really this sense early on of an allyship and a collaboration between the Liberals and the tech sector.

[Music playing]

JP: Take me through what I think is kind of a slow undoing of that allyship. What happened?

CATHERINE MCINTYRE: Yeah, absolutely. Like, if you, if you talk to folks now, they'll say this, this undoing happened over several years. It kind of feels like it happened all at once recently. But they say no, there's kind of a, like you said, slow undoing here. One thing that the sector was annoyed with was they say the government didn't really listen to any of the recommendations, which they felt was a missed opportunity, and also just kind of a slap in the face. You know, they spent all this time and effort to advise the government and it just kind of went nowhere. And, and they also say that policies and programs that the Liberals did announce, most of them came up short, or just haven't even gotten off the ground.

JP: I just want to pick up on something you said there about, you know, this feeling of being ignored, right? Like in your piece, the Canadian investor John Ruffolo and Armen Bakirtzian, the CEO of a Kitchener-based medical device company, and the President of the Council of Canadian Innovators, Benjamin Bergen. They all sort of expressed these feelings of betrayal by the Liberals. Bakirtzian, in particular, talked about feeling like their contributions were shelved and that the Liberals' policies failed. Is it the case of a lot of these guys feel personally affronted by, by Trudeau and the Liberals?

CATHERINE MCINTYRE: Yeah, that was a sentiment I heard a lot. And I think kind of the clearest example of this was with the capital gains tax increase announcement that the Liberals made in the April budget. If you'll recall that this was, you know, a proposed change on the capital gains inclusion rate. It's now been paused, but essentially, it would increase the amount of tax that people would pay on the profits from an asset sale. And this would mainly affect Canada's wealthiest people and business people, entrepreneurs, investors. They absolutely hated this idea, and they frankly found it personally insulting. And they pointed to this as the thing that proved in their minds that the Liberals were no longer on their side. They said that, you know, increasing this tax was an attack on business and innovation, you know, almost more of a symbolic attack on business and innovation than a real one. And that, they said, was kind of the nail in the coffin.

[Music playing]

JP: Catherine, we have talked on this show a lot about this cultural shift to the right that you can feel across public life and about the growing relationship between many of America's richest men and the White House. The U.S. has also, you know, as I mentioned, seen a number of high-profile billionaires go from historically supporting the Democrats to now publicly backing Trump, Elon.

SOUNDCLIP

ELON MUSK: I think we need a change of administration. I think probably the Democratic Party was the party of meritocracy and, and of personal freedom. [VOICE: Yeah], they used to be the free speech party. [VOICE: Yeah.] And these days, they seem to be a censorship party under the guise of hate speech. So weirdly, the in my view, the Republican Party is actually the party of that, that's the meritocracy party.

JP: Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, who run a venture capital firm together, the American hedge fund manager, Bill Ackman.

SOUNDCLIP

JOE KERNEN: 20 things that Kamala Harris has said in the past. It's all anathema to business, to business, and to free markets and to the filibuster and to the rule of law and to the border. And they're all afraid to even say, well, she didn't mean any of it.

BILL ACKMAN: Joe, you're preaching to the converted.

JOE KERNEN: I know, and...

JP: These are billionaires who had been public backers and donors to the Democrats. So, simply switching sides, right? And would you say that what we're seeing here is a similar political realignment, or do you have a sense of something different is happening here? It's like a different context?

CATHERINE MCINTYRE: No, I do think there's similarities between that, that shift in the U.S., and the shift here in Canada. Even if you look at, at donation records, like you said, there are a lot of folks in Silicon Valley, a lot of business and tech leaders that had, you know, previously supported and donated to Biden and Hillary Clinton, previously that threw their support and their dollars behind Trump and his, his last presidential campaign. And we see parallels here, too, where donors, Liberal donors, are now supporting Poilievre, and hosting fundraisers for Poilievre, and the Conservative Party, which are being, you know, very well attended by, by other tech entrepreneurs and, and business leaders as well. So, yeah, I do think it's fair to say there is, there are some similarities.

JP: Can you tell me, like, a little bit more about these fundraisers?

CATHERINE MCINTYRE: Yeah. I mean, so one fundraiser I spoke to sources about was, it happened shortly after the capital gains fiasco at a point where a lot of tech leaders and entrepreneurs, investors, they had kind of made up their mind that they were done with the Liberal Party, but they were still a little on the fence about where they would go next and whether, you know, Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives was the right party for them. These, I'm told, have been very effective in kind of changing the minds of folks who, who were on the fence a few months ago. Beyond fundraisers, though, we're also seeing the Conservatives reach out directly to, to tech entrepreneurs, you know, visiting their, their offices. And, you know, there have been a couple visits to Waterloo startups, which is, you know, a hotbed of, of innovation and entrepreneurship in Canada, which, you know, that's really resonating with people. My sources are saying, you know, it's showing kind of like, the Liberals had showed 10 years ago that they're listening, they're receptive of their ideas, and they want to work together.

JP: We've talked about this kind of blurring of lines between private and public power in the U.S. You have private citizens worth hundreds of billions of dollars overseeing quasi-government departments that are, well, it seems, not subject to congressional oversight. Is this something that Canadians should be worried about at home when they hear that there are groups of Canadian millionaires and billionaires mapping out a future for this country? Or again, do you think that something different is happening here or do you think that that's like a fair question to ask?

CATHERINE MCINTYRE: I think it's a good question to ask. I, I, I mean, at this point, it seems inconceivable to me that, you know, we would see the kind of government takeover by tech billionaires that is effectively happening in the States. And I think, you know, part of the reason is Canada doesn't have anyone with the same concentration of, of wealth and power that an Elon Musk has. But what's happening now in Washington, that level of influence by private sector billionaires calling the shots on things like things that will directly benefit them. That was, that's unprecedented there, too. I don't think people predicted that would happen.

[Music playing]

JP: The other thing I wanted to ask you about was, you know, what extent have any of these Canadian tech giants also been really supportive of Trump himself, right? I'm thinking about Shopify CEO, Tobi Lutke, who we've been talking about. So, after Trump announced the blanket tariffs on Canada, he tweeted essentially against Canada fighting back with counter tariffs. And he's been supportive of Trump's arguments that we haven't been in, not done enough on the border or done enough to like internally fight gangs and fentanyl. A lot of people see Trump's arguments on that as sort of a red herring. But, you know, what kind of reaction has Tobi gotten for, for remarks like that? And are we seeing other leaders in this field, you know, sort of come out in support of or quasi-supportive ways for Trump?

CATHERINE MCINTYRE: Yeah, I think Tobi's definitely the most vocal and open about his, you know, if you want to call it support or at least sympathy for Trump's position, various positions on things like the tariffs and his rationale for, for the proposed tariffs. Beyond, you know, being kind of, as you said, quasi supportive of Trump. There is. Belated, very enthusiastic support for Elon Musk from many of Canada's tech leaders. Many of the folks in this Build Canada initiative. So, you know, indirectly supporting, supporting Trump through Elon Musk. You know, if you go on any one of these guys' Twitter feeds, they're, you know, they're full of praise for, for Musk and his ideas, and what he's doing in Washington.

JP: We've also seen from a lot of these tech guys or powerful business guys in the U.S., a cultural shift to the right. So, Elon Musk, of course, posts in opposition to diversity, equity and inclusion and trans issues. He rails against wokeness.

SOUNDCLIP

ELON MUSK: The Democrats also promoting D.E.I., which is really just another form of racism and sexism. The reason it's called dead naming is because your son is dead. So, my son Xavier is dead, killed by the worldwide virus.

VOICE: All right. So, lets...

ELON MUSK: So, I vowed to destroy the [inaudible] virus after that.

JP: But also, Bill Ackman, who we mentioned earlier, he kind of led the charge on the campaign to fire former president of Harvard University Claudine Gay.

SOUNDCLIP

REPORTER: Harvard President Claudine Gay has announced she is resigning from office. Dr. Gay has been facing increasing criticism over her response to anti-Semitism on campus.

BILL ACKMAN: And this is not just a Harvard problem, and it's an NYU problem. It's a University of Pennsylvania problem. It, you know, the, the more I examine the issue, the more woke, the more left-leaning the institution, the more antisemitism, which is a very unfortunate thing.

JP: You know, you have talked about how this "Build Canada" project was really about policies around innovation and business, but do we have a sense of how much any of these guys are animated by other interests like, like the culture wars?

CATHERINE MCINTYRE: Yeah. Yeah. I think it does go beyond just business and innovation policy in some respects. And for some people, I wouldn't say all of the "Build Canada" members would, would feel this way. But again, if we're talking about the most vocal ones, they have said that they are inspired by kind of the vibe shift in the States. Some of the sources I spoke to for this story said so to me, you know, explicitly and this cultural movement away from wokeness, kind of like a rejection of political correctness. And, you know, as you said, things like diversity and inclusion, I think they are throwing their support behind the Conservatives. They're latching on to a party in Canada that I think would be more receptive of these ideas than, than the Liberals would be.

[Music playing]

JP: I know Tobi from Shopify, and Shopify keeps coming up a lot, but I'm thinking of a tweet that, that I saw him send recently where he was critical of so-called "Wokeness." So has his COO Kaz Nejatian been as well. He's tweeted, like in particular about how John A. MacDonald was maligned by, quote, "The woke media" and about the need to fight what he refers to as like "Woke revisionism," right? And speaking of Nejatian, it might be worth noting here that tax records from 2023 show that he is one of the directors of the true North Centre for Public Policy, which is the parent group for the True North, which is a right wing online media site based here in, in Canada. Just sticking with Shopify for just a little bit longer, Catherine. For a brief period this week, Kanye West's Yeezy website, which is powered by Shopify, was selling a single item: A white T-shirt emblazoned with a black swastika. There was a lot of outrage about that. Shopify was hosting it, and then, did eventually take it down. Did they take it down because it was Nazi merchandise? What happened there?

CATHERINE MCINTYRE: Yeah, the short answer is they did not take it down because it's Nazi merchandise despite having a lot of pressure to do so, including from, you know, some of their former executives at Shopify and employees who felt were very opposed to this kind of thing, being the company supporting this kind of thing effectively. They ended up removing it, not because of any principled stance against, you know, hate speech or anti-Semitism. They removed it because they said it was a "stunt." That's a quote and quote, "Not a good faith attempt to make money." And then therefore, it was a fraud risk.

SOUNDCLIP

REPORTER 2: Why don't you pull it sooner?

HARLEY FINKELSTEIN: Look, good process creates good outcomes, Sarah, and we follow a good process here. It was down the moment we realized this was not actually a real commerce practice. They weren't actually engaging in authentic commerce. We pulled it down.

CATHERINE MCINTYRE: So, yeah, it's, it's, Tobi has had, he's taken this kind of free speech, absolutist stance for a while. And you know, I think when faced with pressure to remove this for, in particular, the, the fraud risk rationale is actually kind of a clever way to deal with the backlash without alienating the kind of, like, far-right free speech absolutist that he's identified with.

JP: Can you just tell me a little bit more when you say that he's had to deal with this for a while, like this isn't the first time something like this has come up, right? I remember in the Fall, they were criticized for hosting a store associated with a brand called the Official 1984, which included content praising Adolf Hitler as well as Holocaust denial. And, and then, there was also, like, widespread criticism around Shopify's decision to host the Breitbart store. Breitbart News is an extreme right wing U.S. media organization. And just talk to me a bit more about Tobi's rationale around that stuff, and how Shopify has dealt with this in the past.

CATHERINE MCINTYRE: Yeah. So, he has kind of always taken this position that Shopify cannot impose its morality on merchants and that it will, you know, it'll allow anything that isn't considered illegal in the market where it's being sold on its, on its, on shops that are backed by its technology. You know, he said that if he or the company started making decisions about, you know, what merchants can and cannot sell their products, it becomes hard to know, kind of like where that line ends.

[Music playing]

JP: Just if we could come back to this "Build Canada" project here created by some of the country's richest people. You know, I don't want to get so far down the rabbit hole of specifics here. But, you know, when we look at some of the stuff that they're proposing, I wonder if you could just give me one or two specific examples of what it is that they want to see happen.

CATHERINE MCINTYRE: Yeah. So, I mean, a lot of the stuff they're talking about here isn't super shocking. And many of these ideas have been discussed for years. One of them is, you know, a health tech entrepreneur is suggesting digitizing health records to make them more accessible for patients and doctors, right? Like, that's, that's a very, that's kind of a popular, a popular suggestion that just has never really gotten implemented. Then, another entrepreneur suggests improving the country's immigration system to prioritize newcomers that will contribute most to the economy. Someone else has suggested reducing interprovincial trade barriers. Very hot topic right now. So, you know, these aren't groundbreaking suggestions. They do go into some detail about how they think these policies could actually get off the ground. But I think it's important to note that all of the, the entrepreneurs that are suggesting these policies, they stand to gain personally from them, which isn't to say that they are bad for the rest of the country. But it's just I think, you know, there's a clear element of, of self-interest here to keep in mind.

JP: We talked earlier about how a lot of these guys are moving towards the Conservative Party, and that the Conservative Party has been doing quite a bit of outreach with them. One thing I am trying to figure out is how much of this here is, is them just kind of putting their finger in the air and trying to figure out which way the political winds are blowing, right? Right now, polling is indicating that since Trudeau stepped down and Mark Carney emerged, that things have really tightened up, right? And that the federal Liberals have picked up some momentum. The Conservatives are still ahead. But do you think that there is a world in which these tech millionaires, billionaires here in Canada could be brought back to the Liberal Party coalition under someone like Mark Carney? Or is this essentially a lost cause at this point?

CATHERINE MCINTYRE: Yeah, it's a really interesting question. If I am to take these people at their word, they want a change in government and no Liberal candidate will satisfy them at this point. They view, you know, Chrystia Freeland and Mark Carney, compare the two front runners in the Liberal leadership race as Liberal insiders who would not be drastically different from a Trudeau government. But, you know, as you said, the, the polls have been narrowing. And if these people want influence to power and in policy, they'll, they'll want whoever is in government to listen to them. And I think, you know, they view the Liberals as being less receptive to their ideas. You know, certainly around things like smaller government and lower taxes than a Conservative government would be. But yeah, I mean, it would be in their interest to, again, try to work with the Liberals if they, if they end up winning the next election if, if influence and power, as I said, is, is their, their goal here.

JP: Okay. Catherine, this is great. Thank you so much for coming by.

CATHERINE MCINTYRE: Thanks, Jayme.

[Music: Theme]

JP: Alright. That's all for today. I'm Jayme Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.

For transcripts of this series, please visit this page.

Canadian Tech's rightward drift - Transcript

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