Juno News - Davos Day 1： Klaus Schwab says ＂selfish＂ people are to blame for trust crisis

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true

00:01:24.440 oh i'm back on now okay sorry i thought we like just completely cut the show so

00:01:28.380 this is what happens. I want to blame Klaus Schwab. I don't know if I can on that. That

00:01:32.360 might have just been like me sitting on my mic back. Apologies for that. You wouldn't believe

00:01:37.620 we are professionals, really. But anyway, one of the things that I wanted to share with you here

00:01:44.480 is that we are in the country of Austria right now. We are actually in Donburn, Switzerland,

00:01:51.980 where we were forced to basically look outside the area that we wanted to stay in just because

00:01:58.160 the World Economic Forum was so hell-bent on keeping people out. So all of that is to say

00:02:03.920 we are still here. We are driving lots. We're seeing the beautiful Swiss Alps and the Austrian

00:02:09.620 Alps, I should say. So maybe you'll get a little bit of a reprieve from me if I just get like

00:02:16.080 run off the road or something by some errant mountain goat. But nevertheless, we are really

00:02:21.340 fully committing to covering this conference where the theme is rebuilding trust. And we'll

00:02:28.220 talk about that a little bit, but I wanted to give you a bit of a scene setter for what you 0.87

00:02:32.500 can expect this week. I'm joined in Davos by my producer and videographer, Sean, who you can't

00:02:38.340 see, but I understand you heard a few moments ago. He made a rare audio cameo on the program

00:02:43.280 and also by True North journalist and editor, Cosman Georgia, who is with me. I was going to

00:02:49.160 say in studio. He's joining me in my hotel room, which is not nearly as salacious as it sounds,

00:02:53.620 I promise you. Cosman, good to have you joining us in Davos here. Let me just ask you, because

00:02:59.640 you're a first-timer at this, you've not seen this conference in action before. What have your

00:03:04.860 early impressions been here? I think the most extraordinary impression I've had is the fact

00:03:11.460 that life goes on in Davos. I mean, driving through the city, you see schoolchildren returning

00:03:19.100 home you see people walking around biking etc while at the same time all of these global elites

00:03:27.420 descend on this place to set the global agenda so it's a really interesting juxtaposition that

00:03:34.540 happens where you see ordinary people going about their everyday lives yet there are

00:03:41.900 consequential decisions being made at this conference yeah and i think that it's interesting

00:03:48.380 because you're right in some ways like there are still locals here but it's also weird and i've

00:03:53.500 talked about this in the past that like all of these stores that exist every other week of the

00:03:58.060 year are just completely gone and when you walk down the main drag it's like you know the india

00:04:03.100 pavilion and the second india pavilion and the third india pavilion and so it's like i remember

00:04:07.180 the first time i i came i was looking on google maps ahead of time and saying oh that might be a

00:04:11.260 good restaurant to check out and then you get there it's like oh the restaurants just picked

00:04:14.460 up and left town because the World Economic Forum is here. So the theme this year is rebuilding

00:04:20.620 trust. They've got, you know, some heavy hitters on the lineup. There's the premier of China,

00:04:24.840 Lee Chang. There's Javier Malay, who's the president of Argentina, who interestingly has

00:04:29.800 been here before as an economist. Emmanuel Macron. No one officially from Canada, as far as the

00:04:36.300 Canadian government, is on the speakers list. Now, whether they'll make appearances, I don't know.

00:04:40.400 But what is it you're looking out for this week?

00:04:43.100 I think the issue of trust kind of like underwrites everything that's happening here.

00:04:49.520 And True North has reported on their global risk report, which the World Economic Forum releases every single year.

00:04:58.780 And the number one issue that they chose in the short term for 2024 was misinformation and disinformation.

00:05:07.180 and i'm interested to see what some of the speakers will say are the solutions to these

00:05:16.100 proposed problems how do we deal with what they call misinformation or disinformation and

00:05:22.840 the consequences which i think they think is the declining trust in the institutions that

00:05:29.180 they're a part of so solutions might what they might look like uh i i expect some bizarre and

00:05:38.120 heavy-handed uh propositions being made the other major thing is uh ai seems to be everywhere at

00:05:46.860 this conference this year there are a bunch of different pavilions and we are having uh we are

00:05:55.200 going to see the CEO of OpenAI, Samuel Altman, showing up and discussing, giving a panel.

00:06:05.320 And so I'd like to see what he has to say. Yeah. And I actually have a clip that I'll share a

00:06:11.500 little bit later on in the show of Klaus Schwab like six years ago or seven years ago talking

00:06:15.760 about AI. And it is interesting to see. I mean, it's one of those things where we don't quite

00:06:22.140 have an answer in society to how we deal with this. And so I'm very, I'll say nervous about

00:06:28.380 how politicians who don't really know much about the issue are going to come away from this

00:06:33.340 conference, where they are talking about it a lot, thinking like it's just, you know, some

00:06:37.660 know nothing politician who's here. Like I ran into earlier, Chris Coons, who's a senator in

00:06:42.620 Delaware, I presume this guy who's like, you know, 70 has nothing to do with AI doesn't know anything

00:06:46.860 about it. But he's the type of guy who could like be in some panel, and they all say this is

00:06:50.620 something's a good idea. And he brings it back to Washington and says, you know what we ought to do.

00:06:54.140 So I'm nervous about that. And so in the case of Sam Altman, you know, maybe he can, you know,

00:06:58.660 bring something relatively sensible to the discussion. There also has just been this

00:07:04.180 massive, massive number of sessions I saw on the agenda devoted to climate change and like every

00:07:10.440 possible angle imaginable. There's like, you know, how to transition away from fossil fuels,

00:07:15.400 how to transition to renewables, how to accelerate the transition, net zero, net zero,

00:07:20.160 net like they're doing it's like the same discussion like 20 different times and we even

00:07:24.000 saw a little bit of that walking around today on the streets like there was the one we were going

00:07:27.440 to go into the climate hub but the climate hub hadn't opened uh until tomorrow so we'll we'll

00:07:31.760 give you a full report on the climate hub on tomorrow's show but that seems to be a really

00:07:36.240 pervasive theme here as well yeah no climate seems to be top of mind still but it's not the theme of

00:07:44.080 the conference that seems to have changed uh to an entirely different issue and while i think you

00:07:52.640 know we we came here on the day where protests were happening and all of these left-wing protesters

00:07:59.120 were pressuring the global elites to take more action uh calling them hypocrites etc and if

00:08:08.160 you're here in davos one of the things that you see is like the helicopters flying by

00:08:14.640 uh we we know that there are private jet terminals you know when i arrived here at the airport there

00:08:22.080 were designated world economic forum areas waiting for these global people to come so they're all

00:08:29.440 flying in and the hypocrisy is mounting and i do think that uh they're aware of it to some degree

00:08:37.760 right? And it'll be interesting to see how long that continues, how long they will keep pushing

00:08:44.100 this climate issue when it's apparent to everybody that they are not really part of the solution.

00:08:52.220 Yeah. And just, I mean, as an illustration of this, we were trying to find, there's like all

00:08:57.340 of the, you know, they take the private jets in and then when they get to the private jet terminal,

00:09:01.720 they transfer from a private jet to a helicopter and then they take the helicopter to Davos and

00:09:06.640 then they get from the helicopter to a limo and the limo takes them to their hotel it's a it's a

00:09:10.860 really sustainable way of doing these but we were trying to find the heliport and the reason we

00:09:15.160 couldn't find it on on a map when we were looking is because it does it's not actually a heliport

00:09:19.440 the rest of the year it's a farmer's field so it's like what better illustration of the world

00:09:23.400 economic forum's approach which is to just like cover up the farmer's field with helicopters

00:09:27.860 for all of the uh the jet-setting elites all right well we are looking forward to seeing what you do

00:09:32.700 the rest of the week, Cosman. It is great to talk to you and great to have you here at all as well

00:09:37.140 on True North. We are here on the Andrew Lawton Show. And I just want to give you a little bit

00:09:42.500 of a teaser here. Cosman had mentioned a story, or Cosman had done a story today. And I had alluded

00:09:48.660 to it earlier when Klaus Schwab appeared on Chinese state media. And he was like talking up

00:09:54.560 how China is so critical in helping rebuild trust. Take a look. I think it's very, very important

00:10:02.080 the participation of Premier Li Chang could exactly be placed into this framework of rebuilding

00:10:12.580 trust because, as you know, there are many doubts at the moment whether China really

00:10:23.780 could master all those challenges or is at the beginning of a fast slowing down phase

00:10:33.280 of its economic growth.

00:10:36.040 So to hear Premier Li Chang speaking about the prospects of Chinese economy and the role

00:10:48.140 China will play inside the global economy, I think, can restore and rebuild to a large extent, 0.88

00:10:57.800 not only grows into China, but grows into our global system. 0.71

00:11:05.700 So right there, he, I mean, he's sucking up, basically is what he's doing. He's talking to 0.94

00:11:11.120 Chinese state media about the premier of China, one of the most senior officials in the Chinese

00:11:16.100 communist party and he's saying oh yes china's great it's china's moment it's china's world 0.72

00:11:20.660 which look i guess is a rare bit of honesty on this issue but it shows what this organization

00:11:26.580 is all about they want to suck up to big power they want the big corporate giants and the big

00:11:32.260 political giants to all be under one roof and klaus schwab is the guy that wants to sit at the

00:11:37.380 head of the table for reasons that you know may make sense to him but if you look at it from the

00:11:42.420 the perspective of a citizen of this world, of a country in this world, I should say, you're like,

00:11:47.800 well, hang on. He's not an elected head of state. He's not an elected head of government. This is

00:11:52.080 not an intergovernmental organization. This is not the United Nations, which whatever you may

00:11:57.140 think of it, at least has official standing. This is just a group. I mean, the Andrew Lawton show

00:12:01.720 could have a forum and we could invite all these people, but we don't. And more importantly, if we

00:12:07.520 did, all of these leaders would not want to sit there and kiss my ring like they do Klaus Schwab.

00:12:13.480 Now, admittedly, I can't entertain them in a 24 million franc Swiss villa. Maybe if we do a few

00:12:19.660 more successful election coverage experiences in Canada, we'll get up to the level where we can

00:12:27.340 have a nice villa in Oshawa, but certainly we're not doing a Swiss villa. So that's exactly what's

00:12:33.460 happening in the case of Klaus Schwab. He's enriching himself. He's empowering himself

00:12:37.700 all the while sitting back and telling his people that as you heard in the clip last year is a future

00:12:43.680 is built by the people we are going to be seeing on the streets of Davos. Now on the theme of

00:12:50.460 rebuilding trust, I had to share this clip with you because I think this is going to set the stage

00:12:54.980 for what we see a lot of in the week ahead. This is how Klaus Schwab in that same interview

00:13:00.180 to Chinese state media, CGTN, described the conference theme.

00:13:06.180 Now, why did we choose the theme or the motto, Rebuilding Trust?

00:13:15.400 If we compare the world today with the world before we had the COVID pandemics,

00:13:24.340 we find a completely different mood.

00:13:27.200 First, the world has become very fearful, very fragmented, of course, and in such a

00:13:42.160 situation, trust has vanished.

00:13:46.120 We have lost trust to a certain extent in each another because we all have become, under

00:13:52.880 the pressure of the crisis, of the multiple crisis, we have become more egoistic. So,

00:13:59.880 and if you are more egoistic, you think first of yourself, and this distorts an atmosphere

00:14:07.640 of trust. So, if you want to recreate, and that's the objective of the annual meetings

00:14:14.940 this year, we want to recreate a new spirit, a much more constructive spirit. Again, looking

00:14:21.820 forward and having confidence in our future and that's the reason why we have chosen this theme

00:14:31.400 rebuilding trust

00:14:34.320 so interesting that when he talks about the failure of society to trust institutions

00:14:44.000 which is valid i mean if you look at polling and surveys you can see this time and time again trust

00:14:49.120 is in decline. No one trusts the media. No one trusts government. I dare say no one trusts

00:14:53.660 the World Economic Forum. And who is to blame for this? Well, he says people are to blame. People

00:15:00.400 are being egotistical. People are being selfish. They're thinking only of themselves. This is

00:15:06.220 the Klaus Schwab ideal here, that the institutions are not the problem. The rest of us plebs are

00:15:12.040 problems for thinking only of ourselves and not valuing these people. How dare we not look to the

00:15:18.480 dear leaders of the World Economic Forum and realize all the good they're doing for us,

00:15:22.540 they're there to help us. Yeah, I don't quite see it that way, because some of the ideas that are

00:15:28.140 discussed here are things that may, in a very esoteric way, be entirely normal discussions to

00:15:34.800 have. But to real people, these are not normal. And one example of this is a discussion from 2019

00:15:41.100 between Klaus Schwab and Sergey Brin,

00:15:45.180 who is one of the founders, I believe, of Google.

00:15:47.900 And the discussion was about AI.

00:15:50.100 Now, this was 2017.

00:15:51.340 You think of where AI is now.

00:15:53.520 And I mean, ChatGPT is going to reprimand you

00:15:56.380 if you misgender someone.

00:15:58.140 But in 2017, it was still all uphill

00:16:01.140 and all upside to a lot of people.

00:16:03.060 They realized that it was a blank slate.

00:16:05.600 Who knew what was gonna come of it?

00:16:07.220 And this is what Klaus Schwab and Sergey Brin

00:16:10.680 decided to talk about as just one of the use case scenarios they saw as potentially coming about

00:16:16.840 from AI. So technology now is and digital technologies mainly have an analytical power.

00:16:25.700 Now we go into a predictive power and we have seen the first examples and your company very much

00:16:32.520 involved into it. But since the next step could be to go into a prescriptive mode which means

00:16:40.380 you you do not even have to have elections anymore because you can already

00:16:46.760 predict what predict and afterwards you can say why do we need elections

00:16:53.160 because we know what the result will be

00:16:56.020 why do we need elections because ai has told us the result you know elections are big business

00:17:06.800 There's a lot of money that goes into elections, to running them, administering them, to running campaigns.

00:17:11.520 What if we just say, hey, JATGPT, who should the next president be? 0.90

00:17:15.040 And it will spit out an answer, and that's that.

00:17:17.820 Now, I looked up this clip because this was circulating today, and I knew it wasn't today,

00:17:22.780 because the conference, as I'll talk about in a moment, hasn't officially, I mean, it started,

00:17:27.260 but the main sort of meat of the sessions have not begun and won't until tomorrow.

00:17:32.360 But I was wondering the context of this, and I looked it up,

00:17:35.060 The first thing I found when I looked it up was not the clip, but it was an Associated Press

00:17:40.320 fact check of the clip saying, I'll read it directly for you because I think this is kind

00:17:46.160 of funny. You heard the clip yourself. The headline, the World Economic Forum's chairman

00:17:51.480 didn't call for AI to replace elections. The claim, a video shows Klaus Schwab, the founder

00:17:58.280 and chairman of the World Economic Forum, calling for artificial intelligence to replace elections.

00:18:02.840 AP's assessment, false. So their argument here is that, no, no, no, he didn't call for it. He just

00:18:10.420 mused about it. Like this is their answer. Like, oh, he just, he wasn't endorsing and he was just

00:18:15.620 saying it's a possibility. Yeah. But the fact is those ideas, those possibilities are entirely

00:18:20.780 normal to the people gathering here in Davos, but they are not normal to real people in society

00:18:27.180 facing very real challenges, who understandably might have a declining level of trust and faith

00:18:33.140 in institutions, including, by the way, in democratic institutions. So that is where we

00:18:39.760 are as a society now. And Cosman and I were talking a few moments ago about some of the

00:18:45.680 things that are being discussed here. Misinformation, disinformation are key. There are panels,

00:18:51.120 sessions that are being done about freedom of expression. And I'm going to say from past

00:18:55.600 experience. There are unlikely to be panel discussions about the importance of protecting

00:18:59.860 freedom of expression. It was something that actually came up earlier when I was speaking

00:19:05.380 with Jonathan Greenblatt. Now, Jonathan Greenblatt, I have a number of disagreements with. He is the

00:19:10.840 executive director of the Anti-Defamation League, which is an organization that has done a lot over

00:19:16.540 the years to call out what they say is hate, mainly anti-Semitism, but hate in general.

00:19:22.820 And I was chatting about this with Avi Yamini of Rebel News earlier because he had a much

00:19:27.800 less friendly interaction with Jonathan Greenblatt shortly after mine, which was by all accounts

00:19:33.220 quite convivial and civil.

00:19:34.640 And Avi, who is Jewish, had a bit of a different perspective on this because he said the ADL

00:19:39.960 has been crying wolf for years.

00:19:41.980 So now when you have real virulent anti-Semitism around the world, no one is really caring

00:19:48.000 about it.

00:19:48.400 And that was Avi's perspective, which I'm sympathetic to.

00:19:50.920 My approach was very different. I went to my discussion with Jonathan Greenblatt as a Canadian, where we have a government, a government who has promised to regulate what it says is the scourge of online hate, a government that has promised legislation, regulations of social media, human rights laws that will prohibit the dissemination of what they say is online hate.

00:20:14.020 And I wanted to talk to someone who has made a living combating what he sees as hate,

00:20:19.040 what he thinks of these sorts of pushes.

00:20:21.740 And I must say, I was actually quite impressed with his response.

00:20:25.260 Take a look.

00:20:26.320 I'm here with Jonathan Greenblatt from the Anti-Defamation League.

00:20:30.380 In Canada and countries around the world, we hear about how online hate is one of the

00:20:34.440 big menaces to society here.

00:20:36.020 But obviously, especially in an American context, First Amendment protections, constitutional

00:20:40.020 freedoms.

00:20:40.440 So how should governments approach this in your view?

00:20:44.020 I think government should approach social media like all traditional media.

00:20:48.000 So if in your mainstream media you have laws about libel,

00:20:51.240 or you have regulations about slander or misinformation,

00:20:54.620 they should be applied equally and enforced regularly with respect to social media.

00:20:58.560 So it actually shouldn't be considered very differently.

00:21:00.720 If a government is going to regulate hate speech, how should they define what that is?

00:21:05.160 I don't know that you can regulate hate speech,

00:21:06.980 but you should make the companies liable for publishing libel.

00:21:10.180 It doesn't matter whether it's Facebook or the CBC.

00:21:14.980 So if the CBC is responsible for making sure that lies and whatnot isn't published or isn't broadcast,

00:21:22.960 the same thing should apply to Facebook in Canada.

00:21:24.980 The same thing should apply to every other social medium in Canada.

00:21:27.980 You've obviously had a bit of a spat recently with Elon Musk and Twitter.

00:21:31.200 Is your view that this is just a market-based solution that needs to happen here?

00:21:35.260 Individuals can boycott them and that's that?

00:21:37.240 Well, I think individuals need to make their own decisions about what media they choose

00:21:41.400 to use.

00:21:42.400 Brands need to make their own decisions about media where they choose to advertise, but

00:21:46.160 ultimately governments need to make the decision about how they think the media supports the

00:21:53.280 open society that they want.

00:21:54.500 Again, just so we're clear, I don't believe that you can censor hate speech.

00:21:58.160 I think hate speech is the price of free speech.

00:22:00.840 The trick is that the private companies have a responsibility as actors in the marketplace

00:22:06.240 to behave responsibly and that often doesn't happen. Hate speech is the price of free speech.

00:22:15.060 That is a remarkably lucid and accurate comment. Now, admittedly, Jonathan is speaking about this

00:22:22.580 with a bit more authority because he lives in a country that has far more ironclad protections

00:22:27.140 for free speech. The First Amendment in the United States is much stronger than Section 2B

00:22:32.580 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

00:22:35.320 But nevertheless, the point that he's making there

00:22:37.560 is a valid one, that we cannot regulate

00:22:39.580 and should not regulate hate speech,

00:22:42.000 but we need to enforce laws that exist offline

00:22:45.260 onto online scenarios.

00:22:49.060 And that's actually very key.

00:22:50.520 And Bruce Party and I have had this discussion in the past,

00:22:53.240 the Queen's University law professor,

00:22:55.340 that we already have criminal code provisions

00:22:57.560 on hate speech.

00:22:58.360 We already have defamation laws.

00:22:59.740 We already have a number of laws that apply anywhere.

00:23:03.060 They apply in a classroom, they apply in a workplace,

00:23:06.460 they apply on the street, they apply in a theater.

00:23:09.260 And if they apply in any place in Canada,

00:23:11.620 they also apply to the internet.

00:23:14.080 So that was one.

00:23:15.440 And again, I don't believe he's on

00:23:16.820 the freedom of expression panel I mentioned earlier,

00:23:19.060 but if there is at least someone

00:23:20.780 making that comment on that panel,

00:23:23.100 it will be very much needed, I think,

00:23:25.520 for world leaders to hear.

00:23:26.820 I have a message I wanted to share with you from Sheldon, who writes on YouTube in all caps so as to indicate that he's whispering it in a very calm and even-keeled way.

00:23:39.760 He says, focus on Canada, Andrew.

00:23:43.540 So this is a fair comment.

00:23:45.460 I am not in Canada right now.

00:23:46.960 I am several countries away.

00:23:48.420 I'm at the World Economic Forum.

00:23:50.000 I was in Davos.

00:23:51.520 I was not an invited guest of the World Economic Forum, but we are here doing the reporting anyway.

00:23:56.820 Now, this is not to me a distinct thing from what we do on this show generally.

00:24:03.360 The reason that we are at the World Economic Forum is not because we are covering things that matter to the world.

00:24:09.500 They are, and we are, but we are covering things that matter to Canadians.

00:24:14.420 And there are a few direct reasons for this.

00:24:16.640 Number one, we have a country with very deep ties between the government of Canada and the World Economic Forum.

00:24:23.220 Chrystia Freeland, who is the Deputy Prime Minister of Canada, is a member of the Board of Governors of the World Economic Forum and has never answered a reporter's question, to my knowledge, about why she thinks she can do that without it being a conflict of interest.

00:24:38.700 And I'm going to, if I see her, I don't know if she's coming this year.

00:24:41.120 If I see her, I'm going to ask her and I might get the full Menzies treatment and be tackled, although I don't believe the RCMP have jurisdiction in Davos. 1.00

00:24:48.200 So let's hope the Swiss Polizzi treat me better than the RCMP treated David Menzies last week. 1.00

00:24:55.020 So that's one of the ties.

00:24:56.500 We also have a situation in which the World Economic Forum has, by its founder and chairman's admission, Klaus Schwab,

00:25:03.680 penetrated the cabinet in Canada.

00:25:06.200 Now you may think, oh, well, it's a mistranslation, it's bravado.

00:25:09.240 But he is making a claim to have profound influence over the Canadian government specifically.

00:25:18.200 Now, I do not believe, as I've said on this show in the past, that Klaus Schwab is pulling the strings on what happens in Canada.

00:25:24.360 I think we have Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland who have their own ideological agenda,

00:25:28.980 which happens to align with a lot of what's discussed at the World Economic Forum.

00:25:34.540 But the WEF positions itself as being a hub and a basis for ideas.

00:25:40.680 They talk about being ahead of the curve, talking about the future.

00:25:43.380 So when politicians and business leaders are all sitting around the table discussing, these ideas are really germinating and becoming policy eventually.

00:25:54.040 In some cases, it's very quickly when you have these government leaders that meet behind closed doors in the multilateral rooms at Davos.

00:26:01.000 And then they come out and say, we've reached this agreement or this pact or this accord.

00:26:05.020 But in other cases, it may be the seeds are planted that will shape over time to become policy.

00:26:11.220 So anyone who thinks that what happens here is not directly relevant to Canada is not thinking big enough.

00:26:20.360 There are people in this climate that we're in right now, I'm not talking about the chilly mountain weather,

00:26:25.060 I'm talking about the political climate, that are all too willing to put global needs above national needs,

00:26:31.860 to put communal needs above individual needs, and by extension, individual freedoms.

00:26:37.060 And that's why we're here, that's why we're covering this.

00:26:39.060 And I'm sorry, Sheldon, but this is focusing on Canada.

00:26:43.780 Just because we're not in Canada doesn't mean it is not a focus on our country.

00:26:48.300 And Mark Carney, I'll give you a little bonus one here.

00:26:50.900 Mark Carney, who is the former Bank of Canada governor, he's here and he is speaking.

00:26:56.460 And Mark Carney is a guy who has his eyes on replacing Justin Trudeau.

00:27:00.420 So at the very least, we have a direct Canadian political story as well.

00:27:04.180 Now, Mark Carney in the past has always been very friendly when we've seen him.

00:27:07.300 I mean, if you have my question that I should ask Mark Carney this year, let me know in the comments, because he owns the streets of Davos, basically.

00:27:14.180 So he's just like walking back and forth all day, every day.

00:27:16.980 So we'll get to the Mark Carney stuff later in the week, I am sure.

00:27:20.920 Just before we get to Chris Sims, who is joining us, I just wanted to give you a little bit of a rundown of what's going to happen this week.

00:27:28.080 So this is technically the first day of the World Economic Forum annual meeting.

00:27:32.940 but the official opening remarks, the main sessions, they all start tomorrow and run until

00:27:39.380 the end of the week. They run until Friday. We'll be doing the Andrew Lawton Show live every day

00:27:44.300 this week as we normally do, but at a different time. And I promise you, we will iron out the

00:27:49.400 tech glitches we had at the beginning. I just, again, I'll blame Klaus Schwab because it's easy

00:27:54.000 when we're covering the World Economic Forum. But no, I think it was just like me sitting on my

00:27:58.960 Mike Pack. So nevertheless, we will sort all that out. But just before we get to the next topic,

00:28:05.540 I wanted to share something which I think is incredibly important here. In years past,

00:28:10.320 the World Economic Forum has published ahead of time, in some cases, weeks ahead of time,

00:28:15.480 the list of people participating. So they have from around the world, 3,000 in the past,

00:28:22.340 two to 3,000 people, depending on the year that are business leaders, government leaders,

00:28:26.860 media leaders, academics, they're all invite only. They have their coveted white badges with blue

00:28:32.240 lines on them, which means they're really important people. And they publish a list because the WEF is

00:28:37.080 a big business. It's worth about, they have half a million, or sorry, half a billion US dollars in

00:28:42.940 revenue every year. So this is a company that I read one report today, if it were a private

00:28:48.040 corporation would be valued at like a billion dollars. So this is a big business. And in order

00:28:52.860 to be relevant and keep the money flowing in, they need to prove that people believe this is

00:28:58.180 the it place to be. So that's why they published the list. This year, they didn't do that. They

00:29:03.400 didn't publish the list of participants. They also didn't publish the list of public figures.

00:29:08.620 They gave like a one paragraph write-up listing some of the leaders of government and heads of

00:29:14.480 state that are going to be here, but they didn't publish the full list. So actually I'm here and

00:29:18.540 I have no idea who from Canada is here, except for those who were on the speaking program. And

00:29:23.920 the only Canadian I saw was Mark Carney. So maybe a Christian, maybe Christian Freeland's here. 0.55

00:29:28.620 Maybe not. Maybe Francois Philippe Champagne is here. Maybe Pierre Polyev is here. Who knows?

00:29:33.220 Maybe Maxine Bertie. I don't know. I don't think they're here. But the whole point is that we do

00:29:37.920 not know because the organization that says it wants to rebuild trust won't even publish the

00:29:43.720 guest list of its fancy Alpine conference. So this is just a bit of a palate cleanser. We will have

00:29:50.380 more coverage from Davos via Austria in the days to follow here on the Andrew Lawton Show. But

00:29:56.420 I do not, I want to, to Sheldon's point from earlier, neglect or ignore what's happening in

00:30:02.860 Canada. I know for people in Alberta, it was a very, very rough weekend. We had temperatures,

00:30:08.860 my friends in Alberta, of which I have a great many, were sharing screenshots of their temperature

00:30:14.140 readings and of thermometers. And it just looked absolutely miserable. I think at some places it

00:30:18.340 went down below minus 40. And because of this, you had the Alberta government telling people to not

00:30:24.360 use electricity, to rein in their electricity usage. Now, many people in Canada have reigned

00:30:30.320 in energy usage because they can't afford the carbon tax or the power bills. But it was a bit

00:30:35.480 of a different situation in Alberta.

00:30:37.620 Saskatchewan to the rescue, by the way.

00:30:39.360 Scott Moe announced that Saskatchewan was giving a bit of surplus power to the people

00:30:44.500 in Alberta.

00:30:45.540 But what does this all mean?

00:30:47.040 Chris Sims is the Alberta director with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and joins me

00:30:52.280 as always on Monday.

00:30:53.960 I'm not going to let the Atlantic Ocean get in the way of this.

00:30:56.540 Chris, always good to talk to you.

00:30:57.960 Thanks for coming on.

00:30:58.840 How are you keeping, by the way?

00:31:00.520 We're okay.

00:31:01.480 It was actually pretty scary there on Saturday night.

00:31:04.360 A lot of people might be familiar, you know, any 80s kid that remembers the Cold War.

00:31:10.220 This is an emergency broadcast system.

00:31:12.500 It was like that.

00:31:14.120 Instead of being worried about the Ruskies, we were worried about the lights suddenly going out.

00:31:18.840 And when it's minus 42 outside without the wind chill, that's pretty scary because then you're getting into like pipe bursting cold.

00:31:28.380 So if all of a sudden your power goes out and you're in the middle of a January in Alberta with this kind of wind and this kind of cold, that was pretty alarming.

00:31:36.440 And then we saw, to your point, Premier Daniel Smith taking to social media and saying things I never thought I'd hear or say, saying things like, hey, folks, only use your microwave.

00:31:46.600 Don't use your oven. You know, cover your windows with your curtains. Turn off all your lights. Please, everybody.

00:31:51.740 Like we have to make sure we don't have rolling blackouts. And this is largely apparently because

00:31:57.740 a few years back, a previous government had shut down some power plants, but they didn't replace

00:32:04.020 the generation. So just apparently the story goes, we've lost a lot of power generation

00:32:10.480 here in Alberta, and we've added a lot of people coming to Alberta, myself included.

00:32:15.660 So they've really wanted a larger population of people coming here, lots of people moving here

00:32:19.980 to do business as well. So the grid just couldn't take it apparently. And the Alberta government

00:32:25.760 says that they're really being hindered by federal government regulations when it comes to expanding

00:32:31.580 their power base. And so here we had this strange situation of a province of Alberta, which if you

00:32:38.800 close your eyes and picture it, you imagine natural resources, right? You picture them as like an

00:32:43.560 energy patch but here we were facing rolling blackouts luckily that didn't come on saturday

00:32:50.440 night and so i wanted to remind people that this was how scary and critical it was this is how

00:32:56.680 essential it is to be heating your home and prime minister trudeau is nuking us with the carbon tax

00:33:03.000 on home heating as well so it just really added insult to injury well he heard the warning about

00:33:08.440 having to use your microwave that's why he's nuking uh that's a terrible pun i'm sorry

00:33:13.160 That was good. It was twins.

00:33:15.220 Yeah, fair enough. But let me ask you about the electric vehicle aspect, because this was like buried in the list of things you weren't supposed to do in Alberta.

00:33:23.740 They're like, you know, oh, and delay charging your electric vehicle, which is good.

00:33:27.360 Here's the alert that went out.

00:33:28.820 Basically, it's just like, you know, three city blocks in Edmonton are all the electric vehicles in Alberta, I think, in downtown Edmonton.

00:33:35.100 But then you had this ridiculous CBC story I wanted to share with people.

00:33:40.720 I know you've read it, but basically what CBC has said here is that the winter is the perfect time to have an electric car.

00:33:50.660 Their headline here, electric cars, the best vehicle in frigid temperatures, they're saying.

00:33:56.460 Meanwhile, the government is like, no, no, no, stop charging these things.

00:33:59.440 We can't sustain it on the grid.

00:34:01.480 Yeah, exactly.

00:34:02.260 This is literally part of what they said.

00:34:04.320 turn off all unnecessary lights and electrical appliances minimize the use of space heaters

00:34:09.360 delay use of major power appliances delay charging electric vehicles okay and so okay i'm not an

00:34:16.480 electrical engineer but i was a journalist for an awful long time so i've spoken to you know a

00:34:21.120 quadrillion people about all sorts of things including things like electric vehicles the

00:34:26.480 story goes is if you have your own electric vehicle quite often you have to have an upgrade

00:34:33.280 to your panel at home in order to be able to pull enough juice off the grid to plug your own car in

00:34:40.320 okay therefore it uses a little bit more power than a laptop to charge the thing the point here

00:34:47.920 being electric vehicles use a lot of energy in order to recharge their batteries the idea that

00:34:54.560 while we're all being told to avoid using hair dryers and blenders to have the cvc come out and 0.77

00:35:00.480 and say, hey, you know what's awesome in minus 50 windchill, which it was here in Lethbridge,

00:35:04.640 by the way, an electric vehicle. While the alert itself is saying, folks, don't do this.

00:35:10.560 This is where good intentions or fanciful notions or good planning, you know, I would love it if we

00:35:17.320 all ran off dilithium crystal generators. I'm a Star Trek kid. That would be fine. The only problem

00:35:22.440 is they don't exist. So that's a bit of a big problem when you've got minus 40 degrees outside

00:35:28.420 and you don't want your house and your kids freezing.

00:35:31.420 So to have this CBC article come out at this time

00:35:33.900 was just bizarre.

00:35:35.980 Yeah, and when you mentioned the,

00:35:38.660 I happened to get that lithium crystal reference

00:35:41.100 only because Ezra used it in his book,

00:35:43.580 Ethical Oil, back in the day.

00:35:45.460 So I learned it there, not from Star Trek. 0.51

00:35:47.700 I'm a bit of a weird, a dork

00:35:49.820 for a different reason like that. 0.99

00:35:51.240 I was gonna say, we have to convert you, what the heck?

00:35:53.140 Yeah, fair enough.

00:35:54.000 But I don't do sci, I don't do aliens, I don't do sci-fi.

00:35:56.600 So it's not just Star Trek specifically before all the Trekkies jump on me here.

00:36:00.920 But the thing that I would point out here is that everyone who talks about the transition

00:36:05.900 misses what is the most painfully obvious point, which is that we don't yet have the

00:36:10.560 magic thing that we can transition to that will do all of the things we're getting rid

00:36:15.620 of can.

00:36:16.600 And to put this back to the World Economic Forum context for a moment, we have people

00:36:20.860 here that are on these panels talking about, oh, the acceleration of the transition, net

00:36:25.000 zero, all of this.

00:36:25.960 And none of them have an answer for how you're going to get the people in Alberta through a cold that is minus 40, of how you're going to power the developing world, which right now only has fossil fuels available to them.

00:36:40.860 None of them have or really care about that.

00:36:44.380 And it's very fanciful, maybe.

00:36:46.740 I would say quite callous, to be honest.

00:36:49.600 It is callous because at the end of the day, these are real people involved.

00:36:53.240 So these are real people, real families.

00:36:55.500 These are people who are depending, in some cases, imagine if you were depending on an oxygen tank or something, God forbid, you know, you need electricity, you need power.

00:37:04.240 I'll give you an example.

00:37:05.640 There's a gentleman out in British Columbia.

00:37:07.460 He is a scientist.

00:37:08.700 OK, he does these calculations all the time.

00:37:11.240 We happen to disagree even on the carbon tax.

00:37:13.500 So he's not completely on my side here, but he understands energy calculation.

00:37:18.460 A few years back, Andrew, you might have remembered when he did this.

00:37:22.080 He calculated that, say, Santa Claus brought everybody in British Columbia an electric vehicle.

00:37:29.700 Boom, you now own it. It's in your driveway.

00:37:32.360 And British Columbia residentially started relying on electric heat pumps for bare minimum.

00:37:38.820 So we're not talking industrial, forget commercial, just households.

00:37:42.420 They would need nine new Site C dams. Nine of them.

00:37:48.920 So for folks who are unfamiliar with Site C, imagine those big honking gorge dams that you've seen on TV and in movies that James Bond runs across.

00:37:59.100 They're building something like that right now in British Columbia.

00:38:02.880 It has taken them like 30 years from first blueprints to final approval to get this thing going.

00:38:08.880 That's the kind of mega wattage we're talking about.

00:38:11.220 they would need nine of them tomorrow if they all switch to electric vehicles and bare bones

00:38:18.600 heat pump electricity yeah and i we don't have it we go back to all of these different scenarios

00:38:25.480 that we've talked about in the past on the show and and you know and and to bring it back to real

00:38:29.720 people because i think real people need to be at the core of an energy transition if there's going

00:38:33.400 to be one and uh real people's needs real appeals people's capabilities and we see that callousness

00:38:39.980 on display with the carbon tax and i don't want to sound like a broken record here because i know

00:38:43.660 this has been coming up in our discussions and other days on my i show pretty much every week

00:38:48.220 now but it's important and the federal government has made a choice here they like to say that oh

00:38:52.860 well it's the climate emergency we have no choice but they do have a choice and they have chosen

00:38:57.340 to make energy which is not a luxury item it is a necessity especially in canada but anywhere

00:39:03.340 they've chosen to make that more expensive. Yes, they have. And here's the nub. So the

00:39:10.120 Liberal government, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his government have a mandatory minimum carbon

00:39:14.760 tax. It's $65 a ton right now. It costs 12 cents per cubic meter of natural gas, 10 cents per liter

00:39:22.460 of propane. But most people in Canada use natural gas. On average, Andrew, that will cost Canadian

00:39:28.820 families more than $300 extra just this winter, just in the carbon tax. But here's the weird catch.

00:39:35.760 So back in October, for some reason, the Atlantic Caucus of the Liberal Members of Parliament got

00:39:40.980 a hold of Justin Trudeau and said, hey, we need a car vote. He admitted, one, that this makes life

00:39:47.400 too expensive. And he admitted, two, that they could afford then to give them a car vote on

00:39:53.060 furnace oil. Only 4% of Canadians use furnace oil. Almost all of them happen to be in Atlantic

00:40:00.540 Canada in vote-rich seats for the Liberals. So he gave an exception on home heating for three years

00:40:07.340 to those folks. But all the rest of us who are using natural gas and propane,

00:40:12.180 praying to God the power stays on, we're still getting hit by this carbon tax. And just one

00:40:17.500 more thing, Andrew, you're going to be hearing a lot about, oh, rebate checks landed in bank

00:40:21.620 accounts today because there's a huge propaganda push coming out of the Trudeau government today

00:40:25.740 saying, you know, thank me, thank me, peasant, for giving you a rebate. No, no, no. The parliamentary

00:40:32.120 budget officer himself has shown that people pay more than they get back. So on average,

00:40:38.800 the average Alberta family will be out more than $900 this year. That's net. That's with the rebates

00:40:45.880 factored in. So yeah, you're right. This is a huge carbon tax punishment on an essential like

00:40:51.460 home heating. Yeah, no, that's important context here. And again, my sympathies to anyone in

00:40:56.440 Alberta who had a terrible weekend. I mean, you're in for a number of horrors with the cold

00:41:02.300 weather in general on a given year, but I know this was particularly straining and trying for

00:41:07.080 people. The good news is Stephen Gilbeau is actually fine with having to reduce electricity

00:41:13.040 because he is already a dim bulb. So it was good. He was already energy efficient in that respect.

00:41:17.960 Have you seen him yet? Did he fly his electric hoverboard over there yet?

00:41:21.820 I haven't seen him just yet. He might have been in the Greta Thunberg sailboat.

00:41:26.260 He left last week, so he should be making it to Davos anytime in 2026, I believe.

00:41:31.780 Well after the next election, though. So good for a contestant in his riding, perhaps.

00:41:36.660 Chris Sims, always good to talk to you. We'll see you back on the other side of the Atlantic next week.

00:41:40.960 Thank you.

00:41:41.760 Have fun, Andrew.

00:41:42.840 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:41:44.920 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - January 15, 2024

Davos Day 1： Klaus Schwab says ＂selfish＂ people are to blame for trust crisis

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