Shopify CEO Backed Giving the Rich More Votes and Pensioners None

Millions. That is the scale at stake in a late-July fight over who should be allowed to vote in Canada, after the chief executive of one of the country's most valuable companies endorsed a plan to take the ballot away from people who pay no income tax and from pensioners. The Toronto Sun summarized the proposal it said Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke had backed as one that would “strip millions of Canadians” of the vote ⁶⁷. It is a number that dwarfs any single riding, any single province, and any plausible dispute about turnout, and it is why a handful of social-media posts kept generating columns and condemnation three weeks later.

In late July 2026, Lütke endorsed a proposal on X for “weighted voting proportional to the amount of income tax you pay,” ranging from no votes for people who don't pay income tax to more votes for the very wealthy, drawing widespread criticism ²³. The posts did not arrive as a white paper or a policy speech, but as an endorsement layered onto someone else's idea, and that informality did not blunt the reaction. CBC News reported that the Shopify CEO endorsed the idea of giving more votes to wealthy Canadians ². CP24 reported that he drew criticism for apparent support for giving the wealthy more voting power ³.

The original proposal appears to have been posted by the account @EricSThor, to which Lütke responded ⁵. That attribution matters because the version of the story that circulated online added characters and specifics that the reporting file does not support. The research file contains no mention of a TD Bank executive as a participant, only @EricSThor as the author of the proposal to which Lütke responded ⁵. Lütke's net worth is reported at over $11 billion US ⁵, and he was photographed at Toronto Tech Week in May 2026 ⁴. The wealth figure became part of the story itself, a shorthand for critics who argued that a billionaire was entertaining a system that would entrench the political power of people like him.

What elevated the episode from a provocation about tax to a broader fight over universal suffrage was the inclusion of retirees. The Toronto Sun reported on July 27, 2026 that “Non-taxpayers, pensioners should be excluded from voting, according to plan endorsed by Tobias Lütke,” a plan that would “strip millions of Canadians” of the vote ⁶⁷. The Ottawa Sun carried the same report under the same headline ⁷. Pensioners in Canada include millions of people who paid taxes for decades and now live on retirement income, disability supports, or other arrangements that may leave them owing little or no income tax in a given year, which is why the proposal was read not as a technical tweak to representation but as a direct challenge to the idea that citizenship itself confers an equal vote.

The exact arithmetic of the proposal remains murky in the sources provided, and the sources do not agree on a single scale. Columnist Andrew Coyne, writing in the Globe and Mail on July 31, noted a proposal of “one vote for every $100,000 in tax you pay” ⁸. CBC's excerpt of the underlying material is truncated and does not supply a complete scale ². The widely repeated detail of up to five votes for those paying at least $500,000 annually, heard in online discussion of the episode, is not corroborated by the source excerpts, and the research file flags it as unconfirmed ⁸². The responsible reading, on this file, is that Lütke endorsed weighting votes by tax paid and excluding non-payers and pensioners, while the precise brackets remain disputed or incomplete in the available reporting.

Nor can the file confirm the exact words attributed to Lütke in some online retellings. The verbatim phrases “Good system” and “Let people with a stake in the future decide” appear in narration of the episode but are not found verbatim in the provided source texts, and the research memo states that it cannot confirm them ⁵²³. What is confirmed is the endorsement itself and its direction: more power for high taxpayers, no vote for non-taxpayers, and exclusion of pensioners ²³⁶⁷. In a story where screenshots travel faster than context, that distinction matters, because the documented endorsement is serious enough without embellishment.

Criticism came quickly and in moral terms. Critics included York University's Dr. Dennis Pilon, who called it a return to “19th century plutocracy, where the wealthy don't think they owe anything to society” ³. CP24's July 28 report centered that criticism of Lütke's apparent support for giving the wealthy more voting power ³. The World Socialist Web Site, writing on Aug. 21, described “outrage in Canada and internationally” over his attack on universal suffrage ¹¹. The language of plutocracy, outrage, and universal suffrage points to why the story lasted: it was not treated as a gaffe about tax policy but as a statement about whether democracy means equal citizenship or priced influence.

That defence did not move the debate onto Lütke's terms. Coyne's July 31 intervention, built around the “one vote for every $100,000” description, was framed as a defence of the basic democratic principle of one person, one vote ⁸. Jerema's Aug. 18 column kept Lütke in the news by praising his refusal to comply with expectations of quiet corporate leadership ¹⁰. The WSWS Aug. 21 account extended the timeline further by portraying continued outrage over the demand to abolish the right to vote for broad sections of the population ¹¹. No legal or policy outcomes are reported — condemnation was the main consequence, with commentary continuing into August 2026 ⁸¹⁰¹¹.

The endurance of that principle is the context the Canadian coverage kept returning to. Canada's system rests on equal voting rights for all adult citizens, a principle tested in courts and elections for decades, and weighted voting by tax paid runs directly counter to it. Students who earn too little to owe tax, unemployed workers between jobs, people with disabilities, low-income parents, and retirees living on pensions would all be demoted or erased under the logic described, while a small number of very high earners would accumulate extra influence. The Toronto Sun's warning that the plan would “strip millions of Canadians” of the vote captures that asymmetry in plain terms ⁶⁷. A system that gives zero votes to non-taxpayers does not merely reward contribution; it defines contribution so narrowly that most forms of work, care, and aging no longer qualify ²³.

There is also what the file does not show. It does not show a bill, a petition, a board action, or a government response, only a billionaire's endorsement and a press and commentariat reaction that stretched from late July into late August ⁸¹⁰¹¹. It does not establish how many people saw the original exchange, how Shopify itself views weighted voting, or whether Lütke intended the posts as a serious institutional proposal or as contrarian provocation. Jerema's framing of Lütke as refusing “the mould of the safe and quiet Canadian business leader” suggests at least some admirers prefer the provocation reading ¹⁰. Pilon's warning about a return to “19th century plutocracy, where the wealthy don't think they owe anything to society” suggests critics see something older and more deliberate at work ³. Both readings agree on the stakes, even as they disagree on the motive.

For readers arriving cold, the takeaway is straightforward and sourced: the head of Shopify publicly backed giving richer taxpayers more votes and leaving non-taxpayers and pensioners with none, prompting reports that millions would be disenfranchised and weeks of condemnation that produced no change in law but left a mark on his public standing ²³⁶⁷¹¹. The precise price list for extra votes remains unconfirmed in this file, with Coyne's “one vote for every $100,000 in tax you pay” the only specific scale quoted in the sources ⁸. Until a fuller record appears, the story is best understood not as a policy on the verge of enactment but as a test of boundaries — what a powerful founder is willing to say about democracy, and how quickly Canadians, from academics to columnists to international observers, said no.