They called themselves “lightning slingers.” They were young men who came of age during a period of technological disruption, with the mindsets required to teach themselves how to do jobs that barely existed when they were born. Samuel Morse might have sent the first commercial telegraph message in 1844, but it was the lightning slingers who rode the wave and brought the disruption.

Morse’s message asked, “What hath God wrought?” One answer is rapacious western expansion that destroyed Indigenous nations as the United States became the most powerful country on earth. Here’s a less meta response: hundreds of entry-level jobs for men who would shape the coming century. Thomas Edison was a talented lightning slinger, as was William Van Horne, the railroad executive who oversaw the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

Who is the Samuel Morse of artificial intelligence? Sam Altman? Demis Hassabis? Before you take that question to the salon this evening, I’ll suggest a different response: Who cares? Telegraphy was an important adaptation of a general purpose technology, but not a lasting one. It’s the modern day lightning slingers who will shape the future. Some of them might even be here in risk-averse Canada, a place that trained many of the scientists who made AI possible, but lacked the deep pools of venture capital required to create a bridge from the laboratory to the real world.

David Wolfe, a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto who made a career of thinking about technology and innovation, didn’t love what I wrote last week. He thinks the business entry and exit data underpinning the Canadian Federation of Independent Business’s contention that we’re experiencing an “entrepreneurial drought” is too cyclical to form the basis of any conclusions about the state of entrepreneurship. Wolfe said he’s observed a proliferation of entrepreneurship courses and programs over his time in academia, which argues against the notion that the next generation is losing interest in starting companies. In other words, keep calm. Things are bound to get better. 

I haven’t changed my mind that there’s something about Canadian culture that restrains entrepreneurship. A nation colonized by farmers and branch plant managers will have different expectations of what’s possible than one formed by revolution or some other crisis. Institutions and narratives form around those cultural expectations. 

That’s why I’m skeptical that the small business lobby’s bid to lower an already low tax rate for smaller businesses will change the trajectory of new entrants. Former prime minister Justin Trudeau dropped the preferential rate to 10 per cent in 2018, and then to nine per cent in 2019. The number of self-employed individuals who are incorporated with paid staff collapsed anyway. Meanwhile, both public and private sector employment were about 20 per cent higher in July than at the start of 2018. 

Entrepreneurship in the U.S. has surged since the pandemic, and might partially explain that country’s inspiring levels of productivity growth. In Canada, where the central bank has characterized stagnant productivity as an emergency, self employment has only just climbed back to early 2018 levels after a prolonged slump. The contrast brings to mind a Scottish writer’s description of the difference between St. Catharine’s in Upper Canada and New York at the end of the first decade of the 19th century. “There, bustle, improvement, and animation fill every street; here dulness [sic], decay, and apathy discourage enterprise and repress exertion,” John Howison wrote in Sketches of Upper Canada, a travelogue published in Edinburgh in 1821. 

But the aggregate self-employment numbers have been hiding something. The number of Canadians who have incorporated, but with no paid help, has surged since the summer of 2022. I used to dismiss this number as a proxy for accountants, marketers and other white-collar types who are gaming the tax system. But the proliferation of evidence that “solopreneurs” are exploiting AI to create value alone or with small staffs could mean there is something happening underneath those lacklustre headline numbers. My colleague Catherine McIntyre wrote about this phenomenon earlier this week, and I happened upon a couple of guys who just created a studio that will produce AI-generated films. 

The objective of Nolia Studios, said co-founder Kirk Hipkiss, is the same as any production house. The plan is to build a portfolio of their own intellectual property, shared IP, collaborations, distributions deals, and franchises, “growing into a larger studio that can bring in obviously younger artists to help tell the stories.” Hipkiss already runs a visual effects company, and his business partner, filmmaker Bob Gaudette, created a well-received AI-generated film. But technology is the reason they could start their own studio. “We are definitely opening up Nolia as a result of our ability to integrate AI,” he said. 

I first included Howison’s unflattering description of economic life in Britain’s North American colonies in an essay after Shopify president Harley Finkelstein questioned Canada’s ambition in the fall of 2024. You might remember the quotation. Finkelstein called it the “600-pound beaver in the room.”  

Much has changed since the end of 2024. For the first time since Confederation, Canada is effectively alone; the British Empire is long gone, and its relationship with the U.S. has been permanently altered by President Donald Trump’s beligerence. Artificial intelligence might be a bigger technological disruption than the internet and electricity. Anyone who speculates on how Canada might react should do so with humility because history is a very rough guide. Canadians have never faced a crisis like this one. 

Finkelstein was back with some bon mots this week. He described Shopify as “probably the most AI-pilled company in the world.” More will follow. “AI is going to accelerate entrepreneurship more than any other job,” he said on the company’s latest earnings call. “We are already seeing early signs of it happening.” 

That would force a rethink of how the economy works. A solopreneur selling a niche product on Shopify’s e-commerce platform isn’t going to make the economy more productive, but they also won’t strain the welfare state if the jobs apocalypse comes to pass. 

Maybe some of them will get inspired to try something bigger. I want to see more entrepreneurs who are hiring people, but these latest employment numbers are encouraging. There’s something happening. 

Kevin Carmichael is The Logic’s economics columnist and editor-at-large. He has spent more than two decades covering economics, business and finance for outlets including Bloomberg News, The Globe and Mail and the Financial Post, where he also served as editor-in-chief.