Carney Under the Sway of the Broligarchs

A little-known advocacy organization founded by some of the richest people in the country has big ambitions to radically change Canada. As I will detail here in the first of three parts running this week, Build Canada has found a strong ally for its policy agenda in Prime Minister Mark Carney.

But that is not all, as further articles will describe. The group is also connected to the push to privatize a publicly owned and created technology considered crucial to Canada's future digital prosperity and sovereignty. And while it may seem the stuff of science fiction satire, they claim their own member of Parliament — a digital robot literally constructed to serve their aims.

The Build Canada vision

Earlier this month, as critics panned the federal government's new artificial intelligence strategy for failing to clearly address the known individual and societal harms, negative environmental impacts, intellectual property risks and threat to critical thinking capacity, one group took a more positive view. Build Canada declared that the strategy "gets a lot of things right, and this government deserves credit for that."

Build Canada was created in early 2025 by what one analyst characterized as “wealthy tech bros” with a policy agenda deemed "indistinguishable from Silicon Valley clichés." The group says it is non-partisan. To date, the organization has produced 59 “memos” detailing Build Canada's positions and recommendations for government on a wide range of issues, albeit with frequent subject matter overlap between them. Of those 59 memos, just five are written by women.

The forming of Build Canada coincided with the beginning of U.S. President Donald Trump's annexation and tariff threats. Many of Build Canada's key early supporters bristled at this country's response to those threats. Shopify co-founder Tobi Lütke, for example, announced he was "disappointed" in the then-Justin-Trudeau-led Liberal government's decision to levy retaliatory tariffs and that Canada should instead be "helping America win."

Shane Parrish, an investor and self-help author, argued that "fighting fire with fire isn't the answer" and a better course for the country would include "slashing corporate taxes," "embracing AI for education" and "making more babies," not "pointing elbows."

Parrish has been publicly linked to Build Canada and, in addition to his comments on Canada's response to Trump's threats, was on record, in December 2024, saying, “I want DOGE to exist in Canada.” DOGE was Elon Musk’s U.S. government budget-cutting advisory body that went on to be ruled unconstitutional for its methods and scope, including the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Parrish also hosts his own podcast. With two weeks remaining in last year's federal election, journalist Rachel Gilmore reported on social media that Parrish had interviewed Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and announced that Liberal Leader Mark Carney had also accepted an invitation to appear. Days later, Parrish posted on the X platform that Carney had backed out of the interview.

That was not the end of it, however. Since winning the election and forming government, the Carney Liberals have increasingly aligned their messaging, rhetoric and policy vision with those of Build Canada. An organization spokesperson even acknowledged that "the Prime Minister’s Office has reached out to Build Canada on occasion to ask about our memos."

The Carney Liberals' approach to AI, including its rapid incorporation into government, is just one of nearly 20 government policy decisions that can be traced back to Build Canada's policy memos, including: slashing public spending, eliminating tens of thousands of public sector workers, embedding corporate leaders into the civil service, breaking democratic norms to support the development of major projects, and gutting climate policy while providing substantial tax breaks and subsidies to businesses.

The list continues, including passing punitive immigration and refugee reforms, reducing international aid, establishing a sovereign wealth fund, creating stablecoin legislation, overriding health and safety regulations in the name of food security, cutting taxes for housing developers, privatizing airports, developing a military-industrial complex, and diminishing public institutions such as CBC and Canada Post.

Build Canada’s far-reaching wish list

For all these successes, Build Canada is calling for the government to go much further. Recent proposals include one calling for the elimination of all federal income tax on incomes of up to $100,000 per year, a measure that would be paid for by drastic cuts to public spending, including reducing funding for Indigenous programs by up to $12 billion annually. Build Canada also recommends reducing old age security benefits to some higher-income recipients and allocating nearly 90 per cent of expected savings not toward reducing seniors' poverty but to deficit reduction.

In another policy memo, the group ignores constitutional jurisdiction in proposing the federal government nationalize municipal transportation rules to allow driverless cars. There is also a recommendation for the government to create a digital passport and partner with U.S. tech giants such as Apple, Google and Microsoft to integrate it with their platforms.

Additionally, Build Canada is seeking more ambitious national AI policy, proposing that the government weaken copyright laws in favour of AI innovation, alter arts funding guidelines to prioritize use of AI tools in creation, and provide new tax deductions worth up to $3,000 for Canadians claiming AI adoption and training expenses, including subscriptions to U.S. services such as OpenAI's ChatGPT.

Build Canada has a sympathetic ear in Prime Minister Carney. While a rookie among members of Parliament, Carney has significant experience in the world of tech oligarchs. Following his time as governor of the Bank of England, Carney interviewed with and was offered a leadership role at Shopify, even after the company's high-profile controversy with the far right.

Opting instead to work at Brookfield, Carney also sat on the board of Stripe — a company in which Trump-supporting billionaire and Palantir founder Peter Thiel and Elon Musk were key early investors — until leaving to run for Liberal leader. Even after announcing that his planned interview with Carney had been cancelled, Shane Parrish posted that he had got to know the prime minister over the last few years and thought he was a "great person."

Such camaraderie between tech leaders and the prime minister was on display last fall when Carney bragged to a business audience about calling in Shopify to help "redesign" a process for part of the government's innovation policy. “We went to Shopify and said, ‘Can you help us redesign this process?’ Somewhat embarrassingly, they came back in 48 hours and said, ‘Do this.’ We looked at it for three months and then we did what they said.”

The prime minister likes to say that he is "not a politician." Yet inexperience alone cannot account for his apparent disregard for Canadians' growing opposition to environmentally ominous AI data centres or widening alarm among researchers, educators, parents and students over AI's impacts on mental health and cognitive well-being.

As Build Canada's policy proposals become more extreme, Canada's prime minister should maintain a respectful distance from tech oligarchs and a healthy skepticism toward industry marketing. Protecting the public interest is paramount. Unfortunately, that is not the standard the federal government is setting as it prepares to cede public control over a critical Canadian technology. More about that tomorrow.