00:19:48.400And that was Avi's perspective, which I'm sympathetic to.
00:19:50.920My 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.
00:20:14.020And I wanted to talk to someone who has made a living combating what he sees as hate,
00:20:19.040what he thinks of these sorts of pushes.
00:20:21.740And I must say, I was actually quite impressed with his response.
00:23:26.820I 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.
00:23:51.520I was not an invited guest of the World Economic Forum, but we are here doing the reporting anyway.
00:23:56.820Now, this is not to me a distinct thing from what we do on this show generally.
00:24:03.360The reason that we are at the World Economic Forum is not because we are covering things that matter to the world.
00:24:09.500They are, and we are, but we are covering things that matter to Canadians.
00:24:14.420And there are a few direct reasons for this.
00:24:16.640Number one, we have a country with very deep ties between the government of Canada and the World Economic Forum.
00:24:23.220Chrystia 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.
00:24:38.700And I'm going to, if I see her, I don't know if she's coming this year.
00:24:41.120If 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.
00:24:48.200So let's hope the Swiss Polizzi treat me better than the RCMP treated David Menzies last week.
00:25:06.200Now you may think, oh, well, it's a mistranslation, it's bravado.
00:25:09.240But he is making a claim to have profound influence over the Canadian government specifically.
00:25:18.200Now, 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.
00:25:24.360I think we have Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland who have their own ideological agenda,
00:25:28.980which happens to align with a lot of what's discussed at the World Economic Forum.
00:25:34.540But the WEF positions itself as being a hub and a basis for ideas.
00:25:40.680They talk about being ahead of the curve, talking about the future.
00:25:43.380So when politicians and business leaders are all sitting around the table discussing, these ideas are really germinating and becoming policy eventually.
00:25:54.040In some cases, it's very quickly when you have these government leaders that meet behind closed doors in the multilateral rooms at Davos.
00:26:01.000And then they come out and say, we've reached this agreement or this pact or this accord.
00:26:05.020But in other cases, it may be the seeds are planted that will shape over time to become policy.
00:26:11.220So anyone who thinks that what happens here is not directly relevant to Canada is not thinking big enough.
00:26:20.360There are people in this climate that we're in right now, I'm not talking about the chilly mountain weather,
00:26:25.060I'm talking about the political climate, that are all too willing to put global needs above national needs,
00:26:31.860to put communal needs above individual needs, and by extension, individual freedoms.
00:26:39.060And I'm sorry, Sheldon, but this is focusing on Canada.
00:26:43.780Just because we're not in Canada doesn't mean it is not a focus on our country.
00:26:48.300And Mark Carney, I'll give you a little bonus one here.
00:26:50.900Mark Carney, who is the former Bank of Canada governor, he's here and he is speaking.
00:26:56.460And Mark Carney is a guy who has his eyes on replacing Justin Trudeau.
00:27:00.420So at the very least, we have a direct Canadian political story as well.
00:27:04.180Now, Mark Carney in the past has always been very friendly when we've seen him.
00:27:07.300I 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.
00:27:14.180So he's just like walking back and forth all day, every day.
00:27:16.980So we'll get to the Mark Carney stuff later in the week, I am sure.
00:27:20.920Just 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.
00:27:28.080So this is technically the first day of the World Economic Forum annual meeting.
00:27:32.940but the official opening remarks, the main sessions, they all start tomorrow and run until
00:27:39.380the end of the week. They run until Friday. We'll be doing the Andrew Lawton Show live every day
00:27:44.300this week as we normally do, but at a different time. And I promise you, we will iron out the
00:27:49.400tech glitches we had at the beginning. I just, again, I'll blame Klaus Schwab because it's easy
00:27:54.000when we're covering the World Economic Forum. But no, I think it was just like me sitting on my
00:27:58.960Mike Pack. So nevertheless, we will sort all that out. But just before we get to the next topic,
00:28:05.540I wanted to share something which I think is incredibly important here. In years past,
00:28:10.320the World Economic Forum has published ahead of time, in some cases, weeks ahead of time,
00:28:15.480the list of people participating. So they have from around the world, 3,000 in the past,
00:28:22.340two to 3,000 people, depending on the year that are business leaders, government leaders,
00:28:26.860media leaders, academics, they're all invite only. They have their coveted white badges with blue
00:28:32.240lines on them, which means they're really important people. And they publish a list because the WEF is
00:28:37.080a big business. It's worth about, they have half a million, or sorry, half a billion US dollars in
00:28:42.940revenue every year. So this is a company that I read one report today, if it were a private
00:28:48.040corporation would be valued at like a billion dollars. So this is a big business. And in order
00:28:52.860to be relevant and keep the money flowing in, they need to prove that people believe this is
00:28:58.180the it place to be. So that's why they published the list. This year, they didn't do that. They
00:29:03.400didn't publish the list of participants. They also didn't publish the list of public figures.
00:29:08.620They gave like a one paragraph write-up listing some of the leaders of government and heads of
00:29:14.480state that are going to be here, but they didn't publish the full list. So actually I'm here and
00:29:18.540I have no idea who from Canada is here, except for those who were on the speaking program. And
00:29:23.920the only Canadian I saw was Mark Carney. So maybe a Christian, maybe Christian Freeland's here.
00:29:28.620Maybe not. Maybe Francois Philippe Champagne is here. Maybe Pierre Polyev is here. Who knows?
00:29:33.220Maybe Maxine Bertie. I don't know. I don't think they're here. But the whole point is that we do
00:29:37.920not know because the organization that says it wants to rebuild trust won't even publish the
00:29:43.720guest list of its fancy Alpine conference. So this is just a bit of a palate cleanser. We will have
00:29:50.380more coverage from Davos via Austria in the days to follow here on the Andrew Lawton Show. But
00:29:56.420I do not, I want to, to Sheldon's point from earlier, neglect or ignore what's happening in
00:30:02.860Canada. I know for people in Alberta, it was a very, very rough weekend. We had temperatures,
00:30:08.860my friends in Alberta, of which I have a great many, were sharing screenshots of their temperature
00:30:14.140readings and of thermometers. And it just looked absolutely miserable. I think at some places it
00:30:18.340went down below minus 40. And because of this, you had the Alberta government telling people to not
00:30:24.360use electricity, to rein in their electricity usage. Now, many people in Canada have reigned
00:30:30.320in energy usage because they can't afford the carbon tax or the power bills. But it was a bit
00:31:14.120Instead of being worried about the Ruskies, we were worried about the lights suddenly going out.
00:31:18.840And when it's minus 42 outside without the wind chill, that's pretty scary because then you're getting into like pipe bursting cold.
00:31:28.380So 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.
00:31:36.440And 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.
00:31:46.600Don't use your oven. You know, cover your windows with your curtains. Turn off all your lights. Please, everybody.
00:31:51.740Like we have to make sure we don't have rolling blackouts. And this is largely apparently because
00:31:57.740a few years back, a previous government had shut down some power plants, but they didn't replace
00:32:04.020the generation. So just apparently the story goes, we've lost a lot of power generation
00:32:10.480here in Alberta, and we've added a lot of people coming to Alberta, myself included.
00:32:15.660So they've really wanted a larger population of people coming here, lots of people moving here
00:32:19.980to do business as well. So the grid just couldn't take it apparently. And the Alberta government
00:32:25.760says that they're really being hindered by federal government regulations when it comes to expanding
00:32:31.580their power base. And so here we had this strange situation of a province of Alberta, which if you
00:32:38.800close your eyes and picture it, you imagine natural resources, right? You picture them as like an
00:32:43.560energy patch but here we were facing rolling blackouts luckily that didn't come on saturday
00:32:50.440night and so i wanted to remind people that this was how scary and critical it was this is how
00:32:56.680essential it is to be heating your home and prime minister trudeau is nuking us with the carbon tax
00:33:03.000on home heating as well so it just really added insult to injury well he heard the warning about
00:33:08.440having to use your microwave that's why he's nuking uh that's a terrible pun i'm sorry
00:33:15.220Yeah, 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.
00:33:23.740They're like, you know, oh, and delay charging your electric vehicle, which is good.
00:33:28.820Basically, it's just like, you know, three city blocks in Edmonton are all the electric vehicles in Alberta, I think, in downtown Edmonton.
00:33:35.100But then you had this ridiculous CBC story I wanted to share with people.
00:33:40.720I 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.
00:33:50.660Their headline here, electric cars, the best vehicle in frigid temperatures, they're saying.
00:33:56.460Meanwhile, the government is like, no, no, no, stop charging these things.
00:36:25.960And 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.
00:36:40.860None of them have or really care about that.
00:36:46.740I would say quite callous, to be honest.
00:36:49.600It is callous because at the end of the day, these are real people involved.
00:36:53.240So these are real people, real families.
00:36:55.500These 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.
00:37:08.700OK, he does these calculations all the time.
00:37:11.240We happen to disagree even on the carbon tax.
00:37:13.500So he's not completely on my side here, but he understands energy calculation.
00:37:18.460A few years back, Andrew, you might have remembered when he did this.
00:37:22.080He calculated that, say, Santa Claus brought everybody in British Columbia an electric vehicle.
00:37:29.700Boom, you now own it. It's in your driveway.
00:37:32.360And British Columbia residentially started relying on electric heat pumps for bare minimum.
00:37:38.820So we're not talking industrial, forget commercial, just households.
00:37:42.420They would need nine new Site C dams. Nine of them.
00:37:48.920So 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.
00:37:59.100They're building something like that right now in British Columbia.
00:38:02.880It has taken them like 30 years from first blueprints to final approval to get this thing going.
00:38:08.880That's the kind of mega wattage we're talking about.
00:38:11.220they would need nine of them tomorrow if they all switch to electric vehicles and bare bones
00:38:18.600heat pump electricity yeah and i we don't have it we go back to all of these different scenarios
00:38:25.480that we've talked about in the past on the show and and you know and and to bring it back to real
00:38:29.720people because i think real people need to be at the core of an energy transition if there's going
00:38:33.400to be one and uh real people's needs real appeals people's capabilities and we see that callousness
00:38:39.980on display with the carbon tax and i don't want to sound like a broken record here because i know
00:38:43.660this has been coming up in our discussions and other days on my i show pretty much every week
00:38:48.220now but it's important and the federal government has made a choice here they like to say that oh
00:38:52.860well it's the climate emergency we have no choice but they do have a choice and they have chosen
00:38:57.340to make energy which is not a luxury item it is a necessity especially in canada but anywhere
00:39:03.340they've chosen to make that more expensive. Yes, they have. And here's the nub. So the
00:39:10.120Liberal government, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his government have a mandatory minimum carbon
00:39:14.760tax. It's $65 a ton right now. It costs 12 cents per cubic meter of natural gas, 10 cents per liter
00:39:22.460of propane. But most people in Canada use natural gas. On average, Andrew, that will cost Canadian
00:39:28.820families more than $300 extra just this winter, just in the carbon tax. But here's the weird catch.
00:39:35.760So back in October, for some reason, the Atlantic Caucus of the Liberal Members of Parliament got
00:39:40.980a hold of Justin Trudeau and said, hey, we need a car vote. He admitted, one, that this makes life
00:39:47.400too expensive. And he admitted, two, that they could afford then to give them a car vote on
00:39:53.060furnace oil. Only 4% of Canadians use furnace oil. Almost all of them happen to be in Atlantic
00:40:00.540Canada in vote-rich seats for the Liberals. So he gave an exception on home heating for three years
00:40:07.340to those folks. But all the rest of us who are using natural gas and propane,
00:40:12.180praying to God the power stays on, we're still getting hit by this carbon tax. And just one
00:40:17.500more thing, Andrew, you're going to be hearing a lot about, oh, rebate checks landed in bank
00:40:21.620accounts today because there's a huge propaganda push coming out of the Trudeau government today
00:40:25.740saying, you know, thank me, thank me, peasant, for giving you a rebate. No, no, no. The parliamentary
00:40:32.120budget officer himself has shown that people pay more than they get back. So on average,
00:40:38.800the average Alberta family will be out more than $900 this year. That's net. That's with the rebates
00:40:45.880factored in. So yeah, you're right. This is a huge carbon tax punishment on an essential like
00:40:51.460home heating. Yeah, no, that's important context here. And again, my sympathies to anyone in
00:40:56.440Alberta who had a terrible weekend. I mean, you're in for a number of horrors with the cold
00:41:02.300weather in general on a given year, but I know this was particularly straining and trying for
00:41:07.080people. The good news is Stephen Gilbeau is actually fine with having to reduce electricity
00:41:13.040because he is already a dim bulb. So it was good. He was already energy efficient in that respect.
00:41:17.960Have you seen him yet? Did he fly his electric hoverboard over there yet?
00:41:21.820I haven't seen him just yet. He might have been in the Greta Thunberg sailboat.
00:41:26.260He left last week, so he should be making it to Davos anytime in 2026, I believe.
00:41:31.780Well after the next election, though. So good for a contestant in his riding, perhaps.
00:41:36.660Chris Sims, always good to talk to you. We'll see you back on the other side of the Atlantic next week.