Canada’s most controversial tech titan, Shopify co-founder Tobi Lutke, recently made waves on X when he suggested that pensioners should, like the underaged, be excluded from voting, as they no longer have a stake in the economy. Voting, he said, should be limited to those “with a stake in the future.”
Like the vast majority of X users, I find the idea of disenfranchising retirees highly objectionable. Canadians, however, should be concerned that demographic and social trends are changing our politics for the worse by creating an electorate that worries more about their own bank accounts than the country’s overall prosperity.
Voters care about the economy, regardless of their age, but not all economic issues are created equal. In terms of voting behaviour, economic issues can be divided into two categories.
The first is pocketbook issues, which have a direct impact on a voter’s financial well-being, from the rising cost of groceries to the size of HST rebate cheques.
The second class of economic concerns are what social scientists call “sociotropic.” These are less directly tied to the voter’s financial well-being and instead deal with the economic well-being of the country as a whole, from GDP growth to the unemployment rate.
Everyone who casts a ballot has a different reason for voting, but sociotropic concerns often dominate. The performance of a government on national economic indicators tends to be one of the strongest indicators of whether or not an incumbent is re-elected, according to a 2024 review of 100 peer-reviewed studies globally.
Plainly put, when GDP growth is high and the unemployment rate is low, incumbents are more likely to be elected. This voting behaviour does not necessarily indicate that the electorate are selflessly putting the country’s economic interests ahead of their own, but rather that historically most voters see how a stronger economy indirectly benefits their families.
An aging population changes these dynamics. A 2026 study by Oxford University’s Tim Vlandas found that elderly voters deprioritize economic growth when they vote. They are less likely to punish governments with a poor economic track record, less likely to vote for parties and governments that emphasize long-term investments, and more likely to reward governments that increase financial support, particularly for seniors.
Unsurprisingly, as the proportion of seniors grows in a population, a country’s politics changes, and economic growth matters less. Sociotropic voters morph into pocketbook ones.
The deprioritization of economic growth, however, is not exclusive to seniors. When working-age voters begin to believe, rightly or wrongly, that they are excluded from the benefits of economic growth, they also become indifferent to pro-growth policies – or in some cases hostile to them.
We saw this effect firsthand with Brexit. I consumed a great deal of BBC News the day after the vote, trying to understand the motivation of British voters.
A reporter asked two working-age “Leave” voters in an economically distressed community whether they were concerned that the vote would harm the economy further, given the negative market reaction. They just laughed, and said that the only people who benefit from the current system were a handful of elites, and that they want to see them lose even more money.
A growing body of research shows that across advanced economies, when communities feel like they have been left behind economically, they become both more populist and more likely to vote on social and pocketbook issues, rather than on economic growth concerns. The politics of a country shifts, leading to the rise of populist governments.
Those countries fall behind economically, relative to their counterparts, which can create a dangerous feedback loop, as an even larger share of the population believes that economic growth that benefits them is possible.
Canadian governments should be concerned about wider trends pushing us away from caring about economic growth. They should worry that these shifts create an electorate that is more concerned about protecting the value of existing assets, like homes, than building new ones. That our country will lose its young talent, as they see Canada not as a place to build, but a place that extracts their value and gives little back in return.
These concerns are real, but governments can address them without taking away anyone’s right to vote. The federal government can alter immigration programs to favour bringing in younger, economic-class newcomers, and fewer grandparents.
Governments can lower the voting age or include Canadians of all ages in our electoral system, through parental proxy voting, where parents can cast ballots on behalf of their children.
Most importantly, they can introduce pro-middle-class economic policies to ensure the benefits of growth do not flow primarily to the 1 per cent.
Mr. Lutke was wrong to suggest that seniors should lose their voting rights, but he was right to worry about a widening proportion of the electorate who see no benefit from growth.
Posted by IHateTrains123