How Shopify Flexed Political Muscle in Canada—Fast

But it is also a company that, like any giant platform business, lives and dies by rules. Taxes, trade agreements, immigration, regulation, competition policy, data. All the boring stuff that quietly decides whether your next quarter is smooth or chaotic.

And lately, Shopify has been treating that boring stuff like a full contact sport.

In Canada, the signal is pretty clear. Shopify’s new head of government relations, Michel Liboiron, showed up and basically hit the gas. Within his first three months on the job, he logged more registered lobbying meetings than the company held across all of 2025 so far. Not more than last year, not “keeping pace”. More than the year’s count, and fast.

That is not a coincidence. That is a strategy.

A new face, same underlying message

Officially, Shopify’s recent lobbying activity is registered under CEO Tobias Lütke. That part matters because it hints at how seriously Shopify wants Ottawa to take these conversations. The registration says Lütke. The meetings, day to day, are being handled by Liboiron.

If you’re trying to read between the lines, it looks like this: Shopify wants the weight of the founder CEO attached to the file, but it also wants a dedicated operator whose whole job is to work the political map, schedule the sit downs, keep the threads moving, and show up everywhere with the same core pitch.

Which is usually some version of:

We are an economic engine. We represent entrepreneurs. Don’t break the internet with clumsy rules. And by the way, Canada should sign digital trade agreements that make it easier for companies like us to move data and services across borders.

Shopify has said for years it supports entrepreneur friendly digital trade agreements, and its global government affairs team has been explicit that they want to prevent political threats. That wording is blunt. Prevent threats. Not “educate policymakers” or “build relationships”. Prevent threats.

So when you see a burst of meetings across multiple departments, it is not random networking. It is perimeter defense.

The meeting that gets everyone’s attention

The headline moment is the one people will remember because it is simple and cinematic. CEO Tobias Lütke sat down with Prime Minister Mark Carney.

Prime ministers do not meet CEOs just because a company wants a chat. Those meetings happen when a company is seen as strategically important, politically useful, or potentially dangerous to ignore. Sometimes all three.

And Shopify has become one of those companies.

Not because it is the biggest employer in the country. But because it sits at an intersection Canada cares about right now. Tech, productivity, small business, trade, and the whole question of whether Canada can grow its own champions without accidentally regulating them into leaving.

A Lütke Carney meeting says Shopify is making sure its voice is heard at the very top, early, before positions harden. Before a new policy becomes a press release. Before a bill gets drafted in the language of “consumer protection” and “fairness” but lands like a hammer on a platform business model.

If you want a softer interpretation, sure, it could be “economic development”. Which, to be fair, was one of the themes of the meetings.

But economic development is also the safest label in Ottawa. It covers everything and offends no one. The real story is the intensity and the breadth.

What Shopify is talking about, and why it is so broad

The registered subjects Shopify has been pushing on read like a tour through the federal state. Economic development. Industry. Science and technology. Small business. Taxation. Finance.

That menu matters. It means Shopify is not lobbying on one narrow issue, like a specific tax credit or a procurement contract. It is lobbying on the environment it operates in. The full operating system.

And Shopify’s representatives have been meeting officials in a range of departments, including Immigration, Finance, and Justice. That trio alone tells you a lot.

• Immigration is about talent. Work permits, global hiring, processing times, policy shifts that decide whether a scaling company can hire the people it needs. Shopify is not unique here, but it is big enough to want a say, and fast enough to feel every bottleneck.
• Finance is, well. Money. Tax policy, fiscal priorities, rules that touch payments, merchant fees, cross border commerce, and the kinds of enforcement that can make a platform’s life complicated.
• Justice is where you end up if you are talking about regulation with teeth. Privacy, competition, consumer protection, liability. The stuff that can turn “we should update the rules” into “you now have a new compliance department”.

And then there’s the political outreach that is not just government. Shopify has met with Conservative international trade critic Adam Chambers, too. Which is classic grown up lobbying. Talk to the people in power, and talk to the people who might be in power next, and talk to the people shaping what “common sense” will sound like in six months.

This is what a company does when it has decided politics is not a side quest anymore.

The trade angle: digital rules, not just tariffs

One of the more revealing moments was Liboiron’s participation in a roundtable on the EU Canada Digital Trade Agreement. The roundtable included Canada’s Minister of International Trade, Maninder Sidhu, and the EU’s Commissioner for Trade and Economic Security, Maroš Šefčovič.

That is not a small room.

And it tells you where Shopify’s head is. Shopify is a commerce platform, yes, but increasingly it is also a cross border data and services business. Digital trade agreements are basically the plumbing. They shape how data moves, how services are delivered, what kinds of localization requirements might show up, what happens to source code rules, electronic signatures, consumer protections, and all the weird technicalities that sound dull until they decide whether you can scale a product across jurisdictions without rebuilding it three times.

Shopify has been vocal about supporting entrepreneur friendly digital trade agreements. “Entrepreneur friendly” is doing a lot of work there. Usually it means fewer barriers, fewer localization demands, fewer sudden regulatory gotchas that a small merchant cannot navigate, and by extension, that Shopify does not want to build support systems around.

So, yes. The EU Canada agreement matters, not just as policy, but as a way to lock in the kind of digital operating environment Shopify prefers.

And to be blunt, this is also about staying ahead of Europe’s regulatory gravity. The EU has been writing aggressive digital rules for years. If Canada harmonizes in the wrong direction, Shopify will want to be in the room before that happens.

Shopify’s lobbying machine did not appear overnight

It is tempting to treat Liboiron’s sprint as something new, like Shopify suddenly discovered politics. But this has been building for a decade.

Shopify’s lobbying presence in Canada and abroad has grown steadily since the company hired Alexandra Clark as its first lobbyist about ten years ago. Clark is now VP of communications and public affairs, and Liboiron reports directly to her.

That reporting line matters. Government relations is not tucked away in legal. It is connected to communications and public affairs, meaning Shopify is thinking about policy, narrative, and reputation as one blended thing. Which is modern lobbying. You do not just file registrations and hold meetings. You shape the story that makes your preferred policy outcome feel “obvious”.

During the COVID 19 pandemic, Shopify also positioned itself as an advocate for small and medium sized businesses. That was not fake. A lot of small businesses did rely on Shopify to survive. But it was also politically powerful. If you can credibly say you speak for entrepreneurs, you can walk into government offices with a much bigger megaphone than a typical tech company.

You are not just asking for Shopify friendly policy. You are asking for small business friendly policy. And if anyone argues, it sounds like they are arguing against main street.

That pandemic era positioning still pays dividends. Ottawa is always talking about productivity, small business, innovation, jobs. Shopify can wrap itself in all of that without much strain.

Lütke’s public opinions are part of the pressure, too

Lobbying is not only meetings. It is also the climate you create around an issue. And Tobias Lütke has never been shy about broadcasting his views on government policy.

He has weighed in on things like financial support for Nokia, Canada Post strikes, Canadian taxation policy, Canadian tech regulation, and even U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war response. Sometimes those comments land like a CEO being candid. Sometimes they land like a warning shot.

That matters because policymakers read those statements in context. If you are a minister or senior official, you know Shopify is not just a quiet stakeholder. It is a company with a founder CEO who can shape media cycles, rally the tech community, and frame an issue as Canada either supporting builders or punishing them.

So when Shopify increases its formal lobbying footprint, it is not happening in a vacuum. There is already a public voice, a loud one, attached to the brand.

In other words, the meetings are the private channel. The posts and public commentary are the public channel. Together, they make pressure.

Why the sudden speed now?

Liboiron beating the pace of 2025 meetings in three months is not about him being energetic, though he might be. It looks more like Shopify sees a window and does not want to miss it.

A few reasons that window might feel urgent:

• Governments globally are rewriting digital rules. Privacy, AI, competition, platform responsibility. Canada does not move fast, until it does. Then you get a bill and a deadline and everyone panics.
• Trade and industrial policy are back in fashion. Canada is thinking more about economic security, supply chains, and how dependent it is on the U.S. That tends to spill into tech policy.
• There is a constant tension in Canada between “we want champions” and “we want to regulate like Europe.” Shopify is trying to steer that tension in its direction.
• The company’s global government affairs framing is explicit: prevent political threats. Prevention means early engagement, lots of meetings, and not letting one department set a narrative before you respond.

And, honestly, sometimes it is simpler. You hire a new head of government relations, you give them a mandate, and you measure output. Meetings are output. Logged meetings are proof of momentum. Especially in the first quarter.

Still, the calibre of meetings, including senior officials and that Carney sit down, suggests this is not just activity for activity’s sake.

What this means for everyone else

If you are a Canadian startup, you might read this and feel two things at once.

First, relief. Shopify is one of the few Canadian tech companies with the scale to push back against bad policy, or at least slow it down. If Ottawa is about to do something clunky around digital trade, taxation, or platform rules, having Shopify in the room could help.

Second, a little discomfort. Because when a company gets very good at lobbying, it can start to shape policy in ways that suit the platform, not the ecosystem. Shopify genuinely represents a lot of small merchants. But it also has its own priorities, like any large company. Sometimes those overlap with small business interests. Sometimes they don’t, and you only notice later.

Also, there is the broader question of balance. If Shopify is meeting Immigration, Finance, Justice, trade officials, political critics, and the Prime Minister, who is representing the counterweight? Consumer groups. Privacy advocates. Smaller competitors. Labor groups. They exist, but they rarely have Shopify’s access or speed.

So Shopify’s political muscle matters not just because it is flexing. But because it shifts who gets heard first.

The takeaway

Shopify did not become a political heavyweight overnight, but right now it is moving like one. Michel Liboiron’s early surge of lobbying meetings, registered under Tobias Lütke, signals urgency and ambition. The company is talking to the right departments, the right political players, and it is anchoring itself in big safe themes like economic development while drilling into the technical heart of modern power, trade rules, digital regulation, talent, and taxation.

And then there is that image that sticks. The CEO of Shopify sitting down with Prime Minister Mark Carney.

That is what it looks like when a tech company decides it is not just going to live under the rules.

It is going to help write them.

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