When it comes to Liberal Leader Mark Carney, it’s fairly obvious who’s around him. Bankers, business leaders, economists and Liberal party insiders. It’s about the same Laurentian elite that supported Justin Trudeau.
Meanwhile, Pierre Poilievre portrays himself as an outsider. But how true is that?
At Stornoway, their taxpayer-funded mansion, Pierre and his wife Anaida Poilievre hosted former prime minister Brian Mulroney and his wife for dinner in 2022. Since then, Anaida has been more publicly partisan than most wives of prominent Canadian politicians, sending campaign emails and giving speeches.
Either that same night or on another occasion, Mulroney’s son Mark, a Scotiabank exec, and his wife Vanessa Mulroney were at Stornoway. That meeting led to Anaida Poilievre and Vanessa Mulroney setting up a new organization together.
Vanessa Mulroney co-runs a PR company for luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton, and is connected with extremely rich Torontonians. The Toronto Star reported in 2016 she had pillows in her Rosedale manor with text on them, “I like champagne and caviar and cash.”
(Pierre Poilievre is also in with two other Mulroney siblings: Ontario PC MPP Caroline Mulroney supports him openly, while Global News Radio host Brian Mulroney echoes the Conservative leader’s talking points and had him on the show for a softball interview during the current election campaign.)
Vanessa Mulroney and Anaida Poilievre’s organization is called Lead Her Forward, and it supports women entrepreneurs.
In fall 2024, Lead Her Forward launched with events in a number of cities hosted in Shopify’s offices, as reported by The Breach. Anaida Poilievre praised Shopify at the time, and invited the president of Shopify and his wife to speak at the organization’s Montreal launch.
Pierre Poilievre, for his part, has also been cozying up to the Shopify guys, praising them and their business repeatedly.
The guys at the top of Shopify have been echoing Pierre Poilievre’s political rhetoric. They’ve railed against taxes on the rich, and advocated against the right of workers to go on strike.
One of the execs, COO Kaz Nejatian, is also married to right-wing media personality Candice Malcolm. Nejatian and Malcolm helped found True North, which is rebranding as Juno News.
The outlet often takes positions critical of the Liberals and favourable of Poilievre and other Conservatives. It has also gotten big donations from Nejatian and other multi-millionaires over the years.
Are the Shopify bros trying to be Canada’s Elon Musk?
Does this sound familiar: super-rich tech guys connected to a media empire get close with a conservative political candidate and propose to remake society?
What about in November 2024 when Shopify’s billionaire CEO Tobias Lütke retweeted someone calling for a Canadian version of DOGE? The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was the brainchild of Elon Musk, the world’s richest man. Now that he’s in the U.S. White House, it has been used to lay off over 172,000 government workers, throwing departments responsible for things like agriculture, humanitarian aid and health into chaos.
During this federal election, Build Canada, a group of business leaders that included the Shopify guys, launched a website full of DOGE-inspired policy ideas like switching to cryptocurrency and cutting 110,000 public service jobs.
Lütke also seems to support Trump’s tariffs on Canada, saying the U.S. is “within its rights” to impose them.
Pierre Poilievre seems starry-eyed. “Shopify is not only the most spectacular entrepreneurial Canadian success story in this century, its leaders Tobias Lütke & Kaz Nejatian have the backbone to stand up and fight for all entrepreneurs,” he tweeted last year.
With both Poilievres snuggling up to Canada’s tech and political elites, a Conservative government could look pretty similar to the U.S. administration.
This article appeared in the 2025 April/May issue.
