A speech this fall by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney directly referenced the pro-AI and fossil fuel group Build Canada, DeSmog can reveal.

The Canadian group was founded in part by Canada’s leading tech billionaire Tobias Lütke, who is CEO of the Ottawa-based e-commerce company Shopify. It is also associated with oil and gas investor and billionaire Adam Waterous. Build Canada confirmed that it’s been in contact with Carney’s Liberal government.  

“The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has reached out to Build Canada on occasion to ask about our memos,” Build Canada co-founder and CEO Lucy Hargreaves wrote in a statement to DeSmog. “It’s great to see ideas shared by the Build Canada community get taken up by government.”

Carney’s Oct. 22 speech at the University of Ottawa was directly influenced by the organization. During the event, which was considered something of a prebudget preview, the prime minister stated that as a country “we have had to go further, build faster, and dream bigger.”

An earlier social media post from Build Canada contributor Eliot Pence had described Canada as being “a country that ventures farther, builds faster, and dreams bigger than anyone expects.”

The similarities are more than a coincidence. Carney’s speech included a footnote indicating the section “Long before Confederation, our country was forged by Indigenous peoples, coureurs des bois, and voyageurs who mapped the continent and built vast trading networks from coast to coast to coast before the Americans had even left St. Louis,” can be attributed to Pence.

Build Canada was thrilled by Carney’s recognition. “Many of the general themes and specific theses often seemed drawn straight from Build Canada memos or principles, and we were delighted to see friend and memo author of Build Canada, Eliot Pence, quoted directly and footnoted in the speech,” the organization stated several days later in a post on its Substack.

DeSmog reached out to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) for comment but did not receive a response.

Well Connected to Ottawa

Build Canada was launched in February 2025, just before the writ was dropped before Canada’s most recent federal election.

It publishes “Build Canada Memos,” which are written by industry leaders and often advocate for fewer government regulations and less government oversight. These memos have advocated for policies including unfettered development of fossil fuel resources and AI infrastructure.

The organization is well connected to Canada’s political establishment. DeSmog previously reported on Build Canada’s numerous ties to Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre. Its current CEO, Lucy Hargreaves, was previously “vice chair of the board” of the Ottawa Centre Federal Liberal Association from 2018 to 2023.

On Oct. 6, Build Canada contributor Pence wrote a post on X defining Canada as “restless, ambitious, commercial” and arguing that in this current global era of upheaval “caution and incrementalism will not suffice.”

Pence is a partner with the venture capital firm Tofino Capital and previously worked for Anduril Industries, an American developer of autonomous defence technology. In mid-October 2025, Pence launched Dominion Dynamics, an “Arctic-focused defence technology company.” 

Carney didn’t mention Pence by name in his speech, but a transcript of the speech published on the prime minister’s government website includes a footnote referring back to Pence’s social media post.

Even though Build Canada was “excited” to hear Carney’s references to Pence’s post and their memos, it still had some constructive criticism for the Prime Minister. “It wasn’t a bad speech as these things go, though we wish he would have given it in the proper forum, namely the House of Commons, where the opposition would have the right of reply,” a Build Canada Substack post reads.  

Applauds New Oil Pipelines

Though Carney campaigned on his environmental credentials in Canada’s federal election earlier this year, his time in office so far has been marked by considerable retreats on climate policy, as well as renewed interest in fossil fuel development.

Carney recently signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the oil and gas-rich province of Alberta that calls for increasing production of oil and gas. The MOU further seeks to develop electrical generation in Alberta for the use of AI data centres.

The availability of large quantities of natural gas in the province have been identified as a potential source of cheap energy for AI infrastructure. The province of Alberta introduced a new bill that would allow AI data centres to generate their own electricity, just two days before the MOU was signed.

Though Build Canada’s Hargreaves told DeSmog the group wasn’t directly consulted by the PMO on the MOU, she said it welcomed the news by “re-amplifying” an earlier “energy-focused policy memo” on its social media account.

That memo, which argues that “Expanding our energy infrastructure will allow us to transport our oil domestically and sell to new markets outside of the U.S.,” was written by Adam Waterous, a billionaire oil investor and the owner of Strathcona Resources Ltd. During the recent federal election Waterous contributed to the Conservative Party of Canada and was also one of the signatories of a “Build Canada Now” open letter published on the websites of major Canadian oil companies in March.
 
“We want to be a green economy and have unlimited time for consultations and stakeholder analysis. These are good things, but they come at a cost,” Build Canada co-founder Daniel Debow later said in an April interview with Maclean’s.

Debow mentioned in the interview that he was reading two books by Matt Ridley, a UK journalist and author who is also an adviser to the Global Warming Policy Foundation, an organization that for years has disputed whether human-caused climate change is real.