Outspoken Tobi Lütke agrees with push to tie voting power to income, non-retirees
Once again, an outspoken CEO is in the spotlight after the head of Shopify supported a proposal for a system that would tie voting power to income tax paid and strip pensioners of their right to vote in Canada.
On Saturday, Tobi Lütke replied "Good system" to a post on X from retired TD Bank executive Eric Thor, who had proposed "weighted voting proportional to the amount of income tax you pay," ranging from zero votes for people who pay no income tax to five votes for anyone paying $500,000 or more.
In a separate post in the same thread, Lütke argued that retirees receiving pensions should also lose their right to vote. "Now you are a dependant and that means no voting, just like dependants under age. Enjoy the deal, let people with a stake in the future decide," he wrote, CBC News reported.
Lütke also referred to politically engaged Toronto residents as "unemployed, unemployable, and useful idiots" in the same social media thread, according to blogTO.
Ottawa-based, Lütke is Shopify's co-founder and CEO, leading a company worth more than $200 billion, according to the CBC.
In 2023, Shopify debuted an internal meeting cost calculator, built as a Google GOOG, +4.36% Chrome extension. The calculator shows Shopify workers the estimated cost of their meeting to the company, using factors like the meeting’s length, the number of attendees and compensation data based on job position.
Public criticism of CEO's remarks
The comments drew sharp reactions online.
John Beebe, director of the Democratic Engagement Exchange at Toronto Metropolitan University, told CBC News the remarks reflect "incredibly wealthy people feeling like they should be calling all the shots," adding that they show "how out of touch folks who have that kind of wealth are with the experience of regular people."
Dean Blundell was among those to respond publicly, accusing Lütke of pushing an idea that could cost his roughly 7,000 employees their jobs, according to blogTO.
On X, user Nathaniel Arfin wrote that it "feels like it should be front-page news that the CEO of Canada's largest non-banking company thinks that poor people shouldn't be allowed to vote."
History of controversy
This is not the first time Lütke's public comments have generated controversy. blogTO reported that in 2017, he faced backlash over Shopify's decision to host an online store for the far-right U.S. outlet Breitbart News, defending the choice at the time by saying "Products are speech, and we are pro-free speech."
CBC News reported that Lütke has also previously voiced support for some of U.S. President Donald Trump's demands on border security and fentanyl trafficking enforcement, calling them "not crazy," and that he is involved with Build Canada, an advocacy group whose members have called for cutting federal spending and implementing digital ID.
In 2025, Lütke announced that teams at Shopify who want to increase their headcount must first prove that the job cannot be done by AI.
