Canada's Broligarchs: Privatization, Military Spending, and the Robot MP
A new series reveals the shadowy group advising PM Carney
A new series in The Tyee reveals who may be really calling the shots in Ottawa.
And it raises urgent questions about democracy, sovereignty, and human rights.
A three-part investigative series published this week by Christopher Holcroft in The Tyee pulls back the curtain on a powerful and little-known advocacy group called Build Canada — and what it reveals should concern anyone who cares about peace, democracy, and the public interest.
Build Canada was founded in early 2025 by wealthy tech entrepreneurs whose policy agenda has been characterized as indistinguishable from Silicon Valley’s. The group publishes a steady stream of policy memos aimed at shaping federal government decisions — and it’s working. Holcroft documents how the Carney government has aligned its policies with Build Canada’s recommendations across nearly 20 areas.
The policy wins are sweeping — and alarming
The list of Build Canada-aligned government actions is long. It includes slashing public spending, eliminating tens of thousands of public sector jobs, embedding corporate leaders into the civil service, passing punitive immigration and refugee reforms, reducing international aid, and gutting climate policy while providing substantial tax breaks and subsidies to businesses.
For peace advocates, one item stands out: developing a military-industrial complex is explicitly on the list of Carney government actions that align with Build Canada’s vision. This is not a fringe position being shouted from the margins — it is now government policy, promoted by a prime minister with deep ties to the tech and finance worlds.
Build Canada’s other proposals include reducing funding for Indigenous programs by up to $12 billion annually, reducing old age security benefits, and weakening copyright laws in favour of AI innovation. It’s an agenda that redistributes wealth upward while cutting programs that serve the most vulnerable.
Selling off Canada’s public digital innovation
Part two of the series digs into a specific and troubling case: the privatization of the Canadian Photonics Fabrication Centre (CPFC).
The CPFC is the only semiconductor facility of its kind in North America. Its chips have applications in aerospace, automotive, defence, and telecommunications — and they are increasingly vital to AI technology. The federal government has invested more than $115 million into the centre over the last five years.
The decision to privatize it came after an AI firm at the heart of Build Canada, Cohere, published a memo calling for the government to “commercialize” the CPFC. Cohere has met with the Carney government 31 times.
Critics are drawing parallels to past privatization disasters. Senator Colin Deacon has cited the example of the Connaught Medical Research Laboratories, privatized in the 1980s, and the loss of domestic vaccine technology that became painfully evident during the COVID-19 pandemic.
There is also a human rights dimension that deserves attention. Cohere has reported but disputed ties to Palantir — a company the ACLU accuses of providing tools to facilitate the violence, lawlessness, and human rights violations of President Trump’s war on immigrants. The government’s choice to contract this firm to transform the public sector with AI raises serious questions about whose values are being embedded into Canadian institutions.
As Holcroft notes, some within Build Canada are also pushing to allow foreign ownership of Canadian telecommunications companies — a move that would further erode the very sovereignty the CPFC was built to protect.
They built a robot politician — and it’s voting against you
The third article is the most extraordinary. Shortly after the last election, Build Canada created what it calls the world’s “first AI member of Parliament.” The “Builder MP” uses OpenAI’s GPT-5 to review every bill introduced in Parliament, summarize it, analyze it against Build Canada’s economic freedom agenda, and assign it a vote.
The results are revealing. The AI MP opposed legislation to create a guaranteed livable basic income, a national ADHD framework, a strategy for children and youth, and housing supports for homeless Canadians — because, in the AI’s own framing, such measures do not promote “economic freedom” or “large-scale prosperity reform.”
On bills concerning First Nations treaties, Indigenous rights, and residential school denialism, the AI abstained or voted no. A bill offering extended bereavement leave to parents of children who have died was rejected because it is “not a large-scale prosperity reform.”
Holcroft connects this to what one scholar calls “Big Tech authoritarianism”: the offloading of political rights, civic responsibility, and democratic accountability from citizens and their elected leaders to private interests and their programmable machines.
Why this matters for peace advocates
For those of us working for peace and human rights, this series raises concerns that go well beyond tech policy. An agenda that promotes a military-industrial complex, slashes international aid, weakens Indigenous rights, punishes refugees and immigrants, and privatizes critical defence-related infrastructure — all while reducing democratic accountability — is an agenda in conflict with the values of peace, justice, and human security.
The Carney government likes to talk about “building Canada.” But as Holcroft asks: building it for whom?
Read the full three-part series at The Tyee.
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Readers want an economy that respects human rights
Last week, PeaceQuest looked at troubling findings by Internet sleuths, and confirmed by the CBC, that Canadian weapons are being used in horrific conflicts in Africa. In previous articles I have pointed out that one of the central flaws in PM Carney’s plans to dramatically ramp-up Canada’s defence industry is that our arms control regime is far too weak.
I asked you to respond to this statement: “It’s possible for Canada to forge new trade and business ties while protecting human rights.”
Two-thirds (67%) of respondents said they strongly agreed, while one in five somewhat agreed (18%). One-in-twenty disagreed (6%) and one-in-ten didn’t know (10%).
Readers comments:
“We should also nationalize all arms manufacturing.” - B. Stuart
“[The government is] giving lip service to human rights and climate change, while blowing carbon emissions targets and inviting more fossil fuel investments, and not keeping Canadian-made weapons out of the hands of international criminals.” - S. Cano
“Shameful for Canada to be involved in any way in the horrors of what’s happening in Sudan.” - B. Gombay
“It should be entirely possible for Canada to undertake trade diversification while preserving its commitment to human rights.” - J. Carmichael
