Canada

We, the undersigned, call upon the Governor General of Canada to publicly condemn Tobias Lütke’s recent anti-democratic remarks, refer his conduct to the Civil Advisory Committee for formal review, and cancel or annul his Meritorious Service Cross.

Tobias Lütke, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Shopify, received the Meritorious Service Cross in 2018 for his entrepreneurship and his contributions to Canada’s technology industry.

Recent public statements attributed to Mr. Lütke are fundamentally incompatible with the democratic equality and respect for citizenship that Canadian honours should represent.

Responding to a discussion about public opposition to development projects, Mr. Lütke reportedly described people attending community meetings as:

“Retired, Unemployed, Unemployable, and useful idiots.”

He subsequently proposed that people receiving pensions should be regarded as dependants and deprived of their voting rights:

“New deal: when you get your pension deal it’s locked in and guaranteed. But now you are a dependent and that means no voting … let people with a stake in the future decide.”

When another person proposed allocating votes according to the amount of income tax paid—giving no vote to those paying no income tax and as many as five votes to wealthy taxpayers—Mr. Lütke reportedly replied:

“Good system.”