Juno News - August 26, 2023


Are the Trudeau Liberals getting desperate？ (Ft. Aaron Wudrick)


Episode Stats

Length

25 minutes

Words per Minute

200.47807

Word Count

5,172

Sentence Count

255

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

5


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hi there, everybody, and welcome to the Rupa Subramanya show. I am Rupa Subramanya.
00:00:20.480 This week, I'm joined by Aaron Woodrick. He's director of the domestic policy program at the
00:00:26.840 Macdonald-Laurier Institute here in Ottawa. He's a lawyer, and he's been on the show before.
00:00:32.420 And this week, he joins me in discussing a range of different things that have been in the news
00:00:37.760 recently, including former Liberal MP Catherine McKenna calling conservatives arsonists for a
00:00:44.600 spate of wildfires this past summer. So, without any further ado, please welcome Aaron to the show.
00:00:51.740 Aaron, welcome back to the show. It's wonderful seeing you again. Today, I was hoping to chat with
00:00:58.700 you about what's been in the news recently and what I feel is like the increasing craziness associated
00:01:04.520 with the ruling political establishment and also the woke left. So, let's start with perhaps the
00:01:14.060 looniest of all claims. You know, after the spate of summer wildfires in Canada, former Liberal MP
00:01:22.300 and Cabinet Minister Catherine McKenna has called conservatives arsonists because they don't
00:01:28.840 support the carbon tax that the Liberals and the NDP support. Where does one even begin with this?
00:01:36.840 Well, Ms. McKenna has never been shy about gaslighting on her concerns. You know,
00:01:41.080 she used to play the victim when she was a cabinet minister. To be fair, there were some really nasty
00:01:45.840 things done to her, and I don't, you know, I don't think any of that was reasonable, and we should
00:01:50.360 all, you know, condemn that stuff. But, you know, now she's not a minister anymore. She doesn't have
00:01:54.220 to be on social media. She seems to still revel in going out and saying these over-the-top things,
00:01:59.460 which to me suggests that, oh, well, you know, maybe you were not that innocent to begin with. But
00:02:04.380 with respect to the climate change stuff specifically, look, I have a simple question for her,
00:02:08.640 which is if Canadian climate change policy can help stop wildfires, A, why haven't you guys done it
00:02:15.620 yet? Because you've been in power for, you know, your government's been in power seven and a half
00:02:19.300 years. So really, this is a failure on you. You know, Canadian climate change policy can stop
00:02:24.740 wildfires. Why hasn't the Trudeau government done it? Why is he pointing, why are they pointing fingers
00:02:29.380 at pure poly if it doesn't make any sense? I mean, the obvious answer is they can't. And if you want to
00:02:34.420 ask them questions like, well, how high, you know, how high does the carbon tax have to be
00:02:39.060 to stop wildfires? That's the question I'd like to ask. This is, Rupin, it drives me nuts that these
00:02:43.920 folks want to have it both ways. They, on the one hand, insist that, you know, Canadian climate change
00:02:48.540 policy is so pivotal and so fundamental, but also that it's a global problem that we can only all
00:02:53.760 solve together. Well, which is it, right? I mean, the reality is Canada climate change policy is a tiny,
00:02:58.900 tiny drop in a bucket and we could literally do everything or nothing and would not have any
00:03:04.520 impact on whether, you know, Yellowknife and Polona are burning today. Now that it's just
00:03:09.180 disingenuous to say that. I know people are going to have debates about climate change policy and what
00:03:13.420 to do about it. That's more of a moral argument. That is not a practical argument. You know, you could
00:03:17.660 say we morally need to do our share. I understand all of that, but as a practical matter, Canada's
00:03:22.920 climate change policy has zero impact on global climate change and the Liberal government trying
00:03:28.200 to gaslight people into thinking that if we drop the carbon tax, you know, it's somehow going to
00:03:32.700 change the number of wildfires we have. It's just a lie. Yeah, I mean, on that topic about climate
00:03:38.540 change, you know, you know, let's, you know, take that as an example. We're told these wildfires are
00:03:46.740 because of climate change, although we know that, you know, a singular event cannot be blamed on
00:03:52.920 climate change. You know, there's a lot of debate and discussion about what's exactly causing these
00:04:00.440 wildfires. There are some credible claims I've come across that show that arsonists were actually
00:04:06.720 responsible for much of the wildfires in Quebec, perhaps even in BC. I'm not so sure about that.
00:04:12.460 But, you know, how is it that, you know, what is, it's almost like the panic around COVID-19 has now
00:04:19.240 been replaced by climate change, fears about climate change, that basically everything that
00:04:24.080 is happening, like I get these alerts on my phone, and I'm sure as you do, every time there's a
00:04:28.840 thunderstorm or, you know, there's like multiple weather alerts, it just makes you very anxious and
00:04:36.060 scared. Is that what's going on here? Well, look, it is impossible
00:04:42.220 to determine whether a singular weather event is because of climate change or not. I mean, right,
00:04:47.360 that a single event is not climate, it is weather. Now, is there an argument that over time, you know,
00:04:54.140 in the long term, climate change increases the frequency? So it doesn't, it's not responsible for
00:04:58.840 every event, but say, you know, you used to have 10 hurricanes, now because of climate change,
00:05:03.780 few years later, you have 12 or 15. That's plausible. I'm not, you know, I don't think there's any,
00:05:08.200 that's a plausible argument. But what we're hearing from the sort of what I would call the
00:05:12.720 eco-extremist crowd is that every time there's an extreme weather event, they point the finger at
00:05:18.280 climate change. And people are not stupid. We know that there have always been these weather events.
00:05:22.420 If you're arguing that we're having more because of climate change, okay, then say that. But don't
00:05:26.020 take every example and say, because of, you know, because of climate change, that's why we had this
00:05:31.580 tornado, or that's why people don't believe that. And it just looks ridiculous. And it is,
00:05:35.800 it is a, frankly, a moral panic. And I think, frankly, it actually probably does a disservice
00:05:41.320 to the argument for climate change, because people start to roll their eyes and say, well,
00:05:44.700 everything is the fault of climate change. So I actually don't think they're convincing more
00:05:48.320 people. I think they're actually hurting their own cause by exaggerating it. And, and frankly,
00:05:53.400 looking like they're trying to exploit a tragedy to advance what is essentially their sort of
00:05:57.660 ideological agenda. Yeah. Well, let's turn to from, from Catherine McKenna to Melanie Jolie, our
00:06:05.200 foreign affairs minister, current foreign affairs minister, external affairs minister, foreign affairs
00:06:10.720 minister. She came up with another whopper, as far as I'm concerned, when she said that Canada has a
00:06:17.060 game plan to deal with the rise of the far right in the US. I think what she presumably meant was if
00:06:23.240 Trump were to get reelected, there was a Donald Trump returning to the presidency. And in one news
00:06:31.180 article, which I read, an expert claimed that there would be an influx of political refugees from the
00:06:38.820 US to Canada, if Trump were reelected. I, I had to read it like several different several times to make
00:06:46.280 sure that I was reading it right, because it's one thing to, you know, for Melanie Jolie to talk about
00:06:51.580 a game plan. But I just found these expert takes to be just so incredibly extreme. What do you make of
00:06:57.340 this? What does it tell you about the perception of the Canadian left on on this country's
00:07:02.500 importance? And their importance in this country? Well, first, the first thing that I noticed was what a
00:07:09.220 breach of protocol this is. I mean, it seems to me that foreign affairs minister, when asked about like, what's
00:07:14.780 happening in a foreign country and people changing the governments there, I think the diplomatic
00:07:19.100 answer is like, well, Americans will decide and you know, we'll respect that choice. And we'll deal with it for her to
00:07:24.780 launch into this, like, you know, concern about all these. Well, first of all, we've already seen this movie,
00:07:29.780 Donald Trump was already president once, America managed to survive it. It was a chaotic four years, I'm not going to
00:07:35.620 deny that. But we, you know, everybody survived it, America survived it intact. There was no that you know, we
00:07:41.420 didn't have refugees from blue states, you know, trying to sneak across the border at
00:07:46.940 Roxham Road or anything like that. So I think I think it's a bit overstated. What's other interesting too,
00:07:52.760 Ruba is contrast the differing reaction. In 2016, when Donald Trump was a surprise to a lot of
00:07:59.020 Canadians, they dealt with it, you know, to their credit, they sort of, they took the relationship
00:08:04.260 seriously, managed it as best they could. Again, Donald Trump, a mercurial guy who, you know, a lot
00:08:09.120 of foreign leaders had difficulty dealing with him. But we managed it, we managed to renegotiate NAFTA,
00:08:13.300 they took great pride in saying we managed the relationship. Fast forward to today, now they're
00:08:17.840 talking about like a completely different attitude. I suspect it has something to do with the fact that back
00:08:22.220 then, they were a new government with a lot of political capital. Today, they're struggling and
00:08:26.560 they're looking for another bogeyman. So if they can frame themselves as a sort of standing up to the, you
00:08:32.080 know, crazy Americans, or the evil Yankees, you know, they're going to do that. So I think that's
00:08:36.760 irresponsible from a, you know, we would hope that they would be adults about managing our, our
00:08:41.760 relationship with our with our neighbor and our biggest trading partner. And it seems like
00:08:45.480 they're prepared to play politics with that, if they think it's worth a few points.
00:08:49.160 Yeah, and also, I'm struck by this old argument, which, you know, I used to hear a lot of a lot of
00:08:55.720 this when I was a grad student, that, you know, Canada needs to diversify away from the US and,
00:09:01.900 and put more of its efforts into, into the EU and cultivating a relationship there. But as one of my
00:09:10.680 professors told me, you know, this is our closest neighbor. I mean, this is, we need to really double
00:09:15.040 down on this relationship as much as possible. And this talk of diversification is just complete
00:09:20.000 nonsense. And I'm seeing some of those arguments, again, like, you know, if, if, if Trump were to
00:09:25.000 return that, you know, we should diversify away from the US, which kind of seems foolish.
00:09:30.920 Yeah, and you know, part of that other diversification was towards China before,
00:09:34.380 right? And we've seen how that's turned out. I think there's been a cold, bit of a cold shower for a lot
00:09:38.340 of folks about that. But yes, you know, there are a lot of benefits to being as United States,
00:09:42.580 I recognize that, you know, as Canadians, whether consciously or subconsciously, because we're
00:09:47.540 smaller, because we are more dependent on them, we pay more attention to them than they do to us.
00:09:53.260 They're bigger, they have more money, they have more influence. It's, it's hard, psychologically,
00:09:57.560 we're always looking for a way to sort of minimize that. But we also need to look at the upsides,
00:10:01.920 we have so many benefits that come from being next to them as a neighbor, they are a huge market,
00:10:06.820 they're accessible, we speak the same language, we have shared the same culture. I mean, it is,
00:10:11.500 it is a huge benefit to us. And I think it would be a mistake to to take that too lightly.
00:10:17.700 Yeah, I take the point that people say, well, we have to be prepared, you know, if if there is an
00:10:23.280 event, you know, that people say in the extreme scenario of civil war, but that really just means
00:10:27.060 Canada doing things that any any sort of grown up country would do things like having a functioning
00:10:32.580 military things like being able to do our own emergency search and rescue. These are things
00:10:36.720 that comparable countries like our cousins down in Australia, similar sized country. I mean,
00:10:41.400 they have the capacity to do these things because they don't have a neighbor like America to look
00:10:45.360 after them. So if we really want to talk about Canada, like, you know, being an independent
00:10:49.220 country and be yourself, part of that involves spending money and making the hard decisions and
00:10:53.460 investing in these things that, you know, we've been basically like the teenager living in America's
00:10:59.720 basement and asking mom and dad to take care of us. And then we say, well, what if mom and dad kind of go
00:11:04.340 nuts? Well, maybe it's time to grow up and take care of ourselves.
00:11:07.900 Well, that's a great analogy. So let's let's talk about Pierre Polyevre and his meteoric
00:11:14.920 meteoric rise. And I feel like it's the first real change to a real challenge to Trudeau since he
00:11:23.560 came to power in 2015. First, let's talk about his makeover. I personally happen to like it. I think
00:11:32.060 it's, it's great that he got rid of the glasses and he's, you know, he's more, you know, he's,
00:11:37.480 he looks more down to earth and he looks great next to his wife. And do you think, do you think
00:11:43.960 this makeover, I know a lot of politicians undergo minor changes to their appearance. Do you think
00:11:50.780 it's enough just based on this alone? Do you think it's enough to defeat the liberals and Trudeau?
00:11:56.260 Well, well, who knows? Don't underestimate the power of the makeover. I mean,
00:11:59.140 where Stephen Harper pulled out the sweater vest and the kitten. I mean, I think that was pretty
00:12:03.320 devastating for the opposition, but look, this is nothing new. I mean, people are kind of people
00:12:08.300 who don't like him will poke fun at it because, you know, because he kind of, you know, he sounded
00:12:12.540 a bit nerdy and had the glasses and now he's got rid of that. And, you know, you can see he's been
00:12:15.840 working out. And so, but this is just standard for all politicians. I mean, did anyone want to deny
00:12:20.780 that part of Justin Trudeau's wave in 2015 was the man's sex appeal? I mean, that's just a benefit
00:12:25.760 that you have. In politics, you, you play to your strengths, you play to your advantage
00:12:29.700 if, and you minimize your liabilities. And so if something like the optics of his glasses
00:12:34.980 were a barrier, why not just get rid of that so that you can, you can, you know, work with the
00:12:40.300 things that suit you well. So I, I don't think it can hurt. I imagine that these days, you know,
00:12:45.220 political parties, they don't do these things on a whim. They'll focus group them and test them.
00:12:48.380 And so there must be something to it. Substantively, you know, I don't know if it's going to make
00:12:52.920 a huge difference, but if, if it's going to, for example, make them a little more appealing
00:12:57.580 so people give them a second look, why not do it, right?
00:13:02.980 Yeah, exactly. And, but more seriously, Aaron, like I've noted with some disappointment,
00:13:07.240 I've talked about this a few times and also written about it in the National Post that
00:13:11.120 the conservative party, um, has, uh, stayed away from what I think are some, some hot button issues
00:13:17.900 on the cultural side of things, uh, and also immigration, immigration, gender ideology. I think
00:13:24.220 these issues animate, uh, conservative voters. And in fact, uh, immigration is even animating people
00:13:30.660 on the left, um, because their argument is now self-serving because all of the things that they care
00:13:35.440 about is now in jeopardy because the, the institutions, the system just can't support
00:13:40.300 the large number of people coming in. Um, but so, uh, Pierre Pagliard was basically stuck to
00:13:47.860 talking about the affordability crisis, which is a very important issue, uh, and the ineptitude
00:13:52.800 of the Trudeau government. Um, do you think, uh, this, this, uh, this is strategic? Do you think
00:13:57.760 this is going to pay off? Do you think this will work in the end? Yeah, good question. I mean,
00:14:03.320 you're right on the, on the housing point. I mean, he's basically gone all in on housing.
00:14:06.520 He's, uh, he's made this the centerpiece. Of course, immigration is connected to housing,
00:14:10.980 right? Because part of the, part of the reason immigration has become a more, uh, explosive issue
00:14:16.960 in this country is precisely because of housing. I think perhaps, um, you know, the thinking in
00:14:21.900 there, and I'm not privy to any of it is that, uh, maybe by addressing the housing issue that will
00:14:26.640 take most of the sort of dangerous, um, polarization around immigration, uh, take the sting out of that.
00:14:32.760 That might be true, but I think it, uh, you know, I think we're actually, it's a good thing in this
00:14:37.340 country. We're actually talking about immigration again. Um, yes, there are, there are xenophobes in
00:14:42.340 this country, but the vast majority of people who are concerned about immigration are people that it's
00:14:46.520 just a numbers game. They're just like, well, where are we going to put them? You know, if we had
00:14:49.640 housing Canadians could all afford houses and there were plenty of places for new, new Canadians to live,
00:14:55.180 I think more, far more people would say whatever, you know, the more the merrier, but,
00:14:58.780 but we don't have that. And we're a long way from that. And so I think we do have a serious
00:15:03.000 conversation about, and, you know, we're getting into the weeds about it. Um, you know, not all
00:15:08.600 immigrants are made equal in terms of, in terms of the, uh, pressure they put on the system,
00:15:12.600 right? So yes, we say, well, we need more doctors and we need more people to build the houses. Okay.
00:15:17.260 Well, you look at what class of immigrants, uh, those are, but then we've got this, which frankly to
00:15:22.500 me is a bit of a backdoor is, is students, international students are coming in that the numbers have
00:15:26.820 skyrocketed over the last 10 to 15 years. The, you know, campuses, the universities and colleges are
00:15:32.360 not keeping up. Um, these are essentially cash cows for these post-secondary, uh, education students
00:15:37.740 because they, they can charge international students a lot more. Um, this is the sort of big
00:15:42.500 loophole to me that needs the most attention because it is, it is a massive size and we're talking
00:15:47.200 hundreds of thousands of students. And it's not that I wish them any ill will, but it's like,
00:15:51.460 if we have nowhere to put them, they're basically being taken advantage of and uses cash cows and they get
00:15:55.060 here and there's nowhere to live and there's no prospects for them after the fact, that's,
00:15:59.200 that's bad for them. It's bad for Canadians and it poisons the well on, on immigration generally.
00:16:04.840 Yeah, absolutely. Like I came here as an international student 25 years ago and I still
00:16:10.840 remember like there were just a handful of us coming to Canada to study. Uh, but that, but that's
00:16:16.660 just exploded since, since I was a student and, uh, and I'm hearing these horror stories of students who,
00:16:22.280 um, can't, um, you know, they're like five, six students living in a room. Um, it it's, it's,
00:16:29.240 it's almost like, um, the kind of situation that you, you would find yourself in India where most of
00:16:36.200 these students come from. So it's kind of bizarre to see that, uh, playing out here as well. Um, just,
00:16:41.980 uh, turning to the political calculus, Aaron, um, you know, uh, situation in Canada has always been
00:16:49.380 different than in the U S in the U S you basically have two major parties, uh, that split the vote
00:16:54.320 evenly and it's a coin coin toss who becomes president. Whereas in Canada, if you add together
00:17:00.440 the liberals and the NDP, they always get a bigger percentage of the votes, um, than the Tories.
00:17:05.480 And now with the present Alliance, uh, between the liberals and the NDP, um, we have a possible
00:17:11.480 template, which will keep them in power and perpetuity, uh, hypothetically, even if the Tories
00:17:17.040 win the most seats. Um, what do you make of this scary scenario?
00:17:23.000 Uh, look, I don't, I actually don't think that that's very likely, you know, I, I think that
00:17:27.500 we've, because of the way the system is set up, cause it's first past the post, they can get a
00:17:31.360 come. I mean, people love to add the liberal and NDP votes together all the time to get this number,
00:17:36.460 but they're two separate columns, right? They don't, it's not like in a, you can add them up after
00:17:40.800 the fact and, and, and they, you know, if the Tory gets 40 and the liberal gets 30 and the
00:17:45.340 Democrats 20, that they can, you'd add the 30 and the 20 together. That's not the way it works.
00:17:49.220 And, and we got to remember too, um, you know, the liberals have been in power, but out of the
00:17:54.180 last, I think it's a lot of the last six, seven federal elections, the liberals only won the
00:17:58.320 popular vote once in 2015. There are actually more Canadians who have voted conservative than
00:18:03.420 liberal in six out of the seven last seven elections. That's a significant number. Now the
00:18:08.080 liberals have the benefit in the system that the votes were in the right places, the way our system
00:18:12.100 works that they win more seats and retain power. But people talk as if there's this huge hill to
00:18:17.080 climb for conservatives and they got to convince so many people in this huge, they don't. This is a
00:18:22.240 game of inches. It's always been a game of inches, uh, like a few percentage swinging one way or
00:18:27.820 another can have huge, uh, changes in outcomes. And I think what you're seeing right now in the polls,
00:18:32.900 a lot of the polls are not very good for the liberals right now, down seven to 10 points,
00:18:36.220 all regions, all demographics. Um, you just see fatigue. Uh, like I don't want to downplay. I've
00:18:41.660 got a lot of criticisms of this government. I think they've been bad at governing generally and
00:18:45.640 have a lot of bad policies, but all governments pile up baggage after a significant amount of time.
00:18:51.200 And, uh, governments have way, way more advantages than opposition parties generally, but the one
00:18:56.540 liability they have is baggage and opposition parties have none. They can say whatever they want.
00:19:01.120 They can promise whatever they want. Justin Trudeau knows all about this because he did it to
00:19:04.800 Stephen Harper in 2015. So if they find it annoying right now, that's that Pierre Polyev is
00:19:09.700 blaming them for everything. Well, that's how opposition works. Opposition parties blame the
00:19:14.520 people in power saying you're not fixing the problems. They promised to fix it. Now that's
00:19:18.820 easier said than done, but they at least deserve a chance to do it because they haven't been the
00:19:22.860 ones failing at it for the last, in this case, eight years. Yeah. Um, final question for you,
00:19:28.940 Aaron, uh, let's talk about the far right, the scary far right, uh, in Canada.
00:19:33.740 They're everywhere. Apparently, apparently I am far right as well. So, um, and, and a lot of other
00:19:41.500 things, um, you know, this is, this is obviously a smear tactic from those who, um, you know,
00:19:49.480 from those on the left who basically, if you don't agree with their agenda, you're seen as far,
00:19:55.340 far right. I find this, um, the, this so incredibly bizarre and amusing, uh, because, you know, my,
00:20:01.640 my experience is that most conservatives in Canada, uh, would be considered as centrist or
00:20:06.900 center left in the U S. Uh, so the fact that many of us are smeared as far right is just
00:20:13.640 downright ludicrous. Um, what does this tell us about how far to the left Canada has drifted in
00:20:21.880 the last 10, 10 years or more? I think it's a, this is just a classic tactic to try and disqualify
00:20:28.320 any sort of dissent. Right. And you've just seen this happen a number of issues. It doesn't matter
00:20:32.280 what their issue is that, you know, abortion or climate change or racism or even spending,
00:20:38.020 right? Like everything is, if you don't like it, just call it far right. And then people will be too
00:20:42.300 afraid to say anything. Um, I always ask when people use that term, if they're serious people and
00:20:48.000 they want to have a conversation, I want them to define, like, what do you consider? What are the
00:20:51.220 positions that you are calling far right? Uh, and I mean, if they can identify something specific,
00:20:56.660 we can debate that. But when I hear the term generally just kind of roll your eyes. I mean,
00:21:00.600 I've been called, I've been called far right because I did, I wanted a tax cut. I mean, I, you,
00:21:05.160 at some point you just sort of say, okay, well, uh, but, but I, I also think it's dangerous for a lot
00:21:09.780 because you, you know, when you start to call too many things extreme, um, the things that are the
00:21:15.060 people that are actually extreme and everybody else, they kind of just merge together. And I
00:21:19.720 don't think that's helpful. So I actually think the left is helping empower the far right, the real
00:21:24.680 far right. And there's not very many of them. Um, but they actually, uh, almost, um, almost
00:21:29.780 legitimize them by calling everything far right. So I think that's dangerous. And I think, uh, you
00:21:34.000 know, peer poly has been accused of pandering to the far right. And the one example that's been in
00:21:37.960 the news lately is this, his policy about the world economic forum. And this one to me is, is amusing
00:21:43.340 because my view is actually, I think peer poly is actually doing us all a huge favor by proposing
00:21:48.900 a very simple, uncontroversial solution that doesn't require buying into more extreme conspiracy
00:21:54.500 theories. All it requires is you to believe that this group, the world economic forum is
00:21:58.360 not a particularly helpful group. I mean, it's, it's, it's kind of like almost a cartoon group
00:22:04.300 of like all the terrible things about global elitism. I mean, you've got super rich people jetting
00:22:08.220 into Switzerland, you know, $2,000 hotel rooms, hobnob. I mean, it's just a, it's a
00:22:13.140 PR nightmare. Why don't we just not go? This is the simplest thing. It doesn't require,
00:22:17.520 you know, you to believe that everybody that goes to Davos is meeting in like, like Dr.
00:22:22.140 Evil in a room and they're controlling everything. Maybe it's just Canada doesn't need to be there.
00:22:26.720 You solve the problem by just not going. And in fact, if, you know, if, um, uh, you know,
00:22:32.000 Justin Trudeau and Jack and meet Singh also came out and said, you know what, we won't send
00:22:35.760 anybody to the world economic forum either. That would solve the problem. It doesn't require
00:22:39.680 you to believe that they're an all powerful like cabal. It just requires you to believe
00:22:45.180 that, you know, maybe these, these people are not looking out for interest and we just
00:22:48.920 shouldn't go. I just, I think I actually think it's an elegant solution. Um, and it's a smart
00:22:53.280 proposal and I think more people should frankly embrace it.
00:22:57.060 Yeah. I've written quite extensively about the world economic forum. And in fact, uh, um,
00:23:01.920 Chrystia Freeland, our deputy prime minister wrote all about it. Yes. Yeah. She, she, I mean,
00:23:07.440 in fact, that's where it all began. Uh, the, the criticism of the world economic forum and the
00:23:12.380 Davos crowd, and she called them plutocrats. And she currently sits on the, their advisory board,
00:23:17.380 which is, uh, another discussion in itself. Um, but you know, just to push you a little bit on
00:23:23.580 this, Aaron, what if it's just, it's just a club, it's just networking. You, you could meet
00:23:28.640 the same people, um, you know, in London, for example, you know, you go meet, uh, Rishi Sunak
00:23:35.360 or something, the prime minister of, uh, the UK, um, and, and, and you, and you network with a
00:23:41.340 bunch of people, the same set of people who would show up at the world economic forum, like business
00:23:45.820 leaders, um, I don't know, NGOs, uh, leaders of NGOs and so on and so forth. So what, what,
00:23:53.160 what is it so special, what is so special about the world economic forum? When, if you, if you were
00:23:58.100 to just think about it as a networking event? Sure. Well, look, it, it, it largely is. It's
00:24:03.540 a question of how, um, you know, how transparent it is for one, right? Like I, and the sort of
00:24:09.380 accessibility, I think the, a lot of the problems with the world economic forum, frankly, are
00:24:13.260 it's just, it's a, it's terribly against the political zeitgeist today. It's extremely rich
00:24:18.180 people jetting into a very expensive place to clink champagne glasses. I mean, it's just a nightmare.
00:24:23.120 And so just avoid that altogether. If you obviously as a prime minister or the government,
00:24:28.180 uh, ministers, you're going to need to meet your counterparts from other countries. That's
00:24:31.880 fine. But normally there's a, there's a very sort of open, transparent process about that.
00:24:36.060 Um, it's not all about money. It's not something where like you, if you're the foreign affairs
00:24:40.400 minister, for example, you go meet your counterpart in another country because of the role they have.
00:24:44.600 It's not some, you know, guy who happens to be wealthy, who comes in and gets your time. That's
00:24:48.920 not the reason for the meeting. So I think, um, I just think, like I said, I'm not, I'm not a
00:24:54.360 believer if only because I have so much experience watching governments, they're too incompetent to
00:24:59.240 impose, uh, a global conspiracy theory. Um, but, but I just think that these meetings are not helpful.
00:25:05.280 I think they are people that are usually spreading bad ideas. And so just not being there, um, it would
00:25:11.480 be good and frankly would restore some trust. And to me, that's the biggest concern. I, I do share
00:25:15.900 the concern of a lot of people that we have massive, massive loss of trust in all our institutions.
00:25:20.300 If simply not going to an event like the world economic forum will help improve that trust even
00:25:24.620 a little bit. I think it's worth it. Okay. Well, thank you so much, Aaron. And, uh, thank you once
00:25:31.020 again for sharing your insights with us. And, uh, this was a great discussion and I'm sorry, I'll have to
00:25:37.100 leave it there, but I hope to have you back again soon. Okay. Always a pleasure. All right. Thank you.
00:25:45.900 Thank you.