Juno News - Davos debrief

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

00:00:08.280 north hello and welcome to you all this is a live edition of the andrew lawton show here on true

00:00:18.240 north it is friday may 27 2022 and just like five seconds before the show started i saw in my little

00:00:27.160 studio there's a fly going around and this is going to bother me for the entirety of my time

00:00:32.720 on air so I just want to warn you now if you're watching this in the video form and you see my

00:00:37.460 eyes darting around I'm not looking out for like you know Klaus Schwab's assassins not that they

00:00:42.600 exist coming after me no no there's just a fly in my studio that apparently took over in my absence

00:00:48.300 which if you've been following online and following True Norse coverage you know was

00:00:51.900 over the past week in Davos, Switzerland, where the World Economic Forum annual meeting was taking

00:00:57.880 place. And I should say, I mean, we had a tremendous, tremendous time covering this.

00:01:02.600 There was a lot going on, a lot to get to. We had people working back in Canada to churn out the

00:01:08.160 content that we were collecting. And then I was also solo on the ground in Davos, Switzerland,

00:01:14.280 talking to people on the ground, talking about some of the oddities of Davos, of which there

00:01:18.860 are a great many. So I literally just got back yesterday. I haven't even gotten like a full

00:01:23.360 night's sleep yet, but I thought it would be great to do a Davos debrief, talking a little

00:01:28.300 bit about my experience and recapping some of the coverage that we found really resonated with

00:01:33.580 people. And I'll give some analysis on that. And also I wanted to take your questions because the

00:01:38.260 whole reason I went over there was to demystify this thing, to demystify this organization,

00:01:46.060 the World Economic Forum, and also the Davos Summit, which is shrouded, shrouded in a lot

00:01:52.280 of questions, a lot of criticism, a lot of conspiracy theories, depending on who you ask.

00:01:57.380 And because of that, you get people that just dismiss criticism of it when it's warranted and

00:02:02.340 when it's justified. So I thought it would be great to just do a throw out the format and

00:02:06.920 actually take your questions and do what we can to talk to all of you about what it is that you

00:02:12.900 have as far as questions are concerned about what happened there and we'll try to do it because I

00:02:18.920 was getting and I just want to put this in context here I was getting like my phone is a little bit

00:02:24.420 better now I mean in the last five minutes I'm just looking and I've got you know a handful of

00:02:28.140 notifications but my Twitter was just blowing up where here I'll see if I can show you so you know

00:02:34.160 I guess it's going to be hard to demonstrate on camera but where you look at it you refresh it

00:02:38.960 and then a second later you refresh it and there's a whole bunch more stuff so it was just non-stop

00:02:44.500 because so many people were following especially the videos that we were putting out which I think

00:02:49.180 were so important because this isn't some shadowy cabal of people that are in the mountains of

00:02:55.560 Switzerland pulling the strings on the world it's a group of people that have influence and are very

00:03:01.440 transparent about what their goals are they're very honest they're very proud of it the things

00:03:05.820 that they were bragging about in the annual meeting in the public sessions the things that

00:03:10.100 you could watch online the things they were bragging about were were things that i would

00:03:14.220 be like why why should we be proud of that why are you oh why why are you telling us this and

00:03:21.980 telling us this as though it's a good thing so if you're watching on facebook or you're watching on

00:03:26.500 youtube uh post your questions and we'll try to get through as many of them as we can if you're

00:03:30.800 listening to the podcast it means that this is no longer live so i can't take your questions

00:03:34.400 unfortunately, but we will try to revisit some of these things in the future. In the meantime,

00:03:39.860 though, I wanted to go over some of the highlights that took place from this thing, because the one

00:03:45.220 clip that went absolutely viral in the truest sense of the word, millions and millions and

00:03:51.420 millions of views, I think on Twitter alone, on my Twitter, it was up to over 3 million this morning.

00:03:56.060 That was this guy, J. Michael Evans, who is the president of the Alibaba Group, which is a Chinese

00:04:02.220 company very deep ties to the state and he is a canadian i mean that's the the part about it 0.86

00:04:08.860 that's so insidious he's one of these westerners that chinese companies have bought up to do their

00:04:13.160 work and he was talking about this technology that alibaba group is so excited about that

00:04:19.080 will track your carbon footprint take a look developing through technology an ability for

00:04:28.780 consumers to measure their own carbon footprint. What does that mean? That's where are they

00:04:35.320 traveling? How are they traveling? What are they eating? What are they consuming on the platform?

00:04:41.160 So individual carbon footprint tracker. Stay tuned. We don't have it operational yet,

00:04:47.600 but this is something that we're working on. Now, I'm having a coffee right now that I made

00:04:54.360 upstairs, which I'm told is good because I didn't go to the neighborhood Starbucks to get it. So I

00:04:59.700 actually go up five carbon points in the social credit Alibaba system that they're developing.

00:05:05.280 Although I did just fly home from Switzerland. So I lost like 500 points on the Alibaba carbon

00:05:11.100 credit system. And some of the defenders came out on this and were saying, oh, but I mean,

00:05:16.120 he's saying it's voluntary. It's for people that want to track their carbon footprint.

00:05:19.580 And I'm like, you know, I remember when vaccination was mandatory.

00:05:23.280 I remember when social distancing and wearing masks were voluntary, rather.

00:05:28.060 I remember when, you know, all of these things were things that you chose to do.

00:05:31.180 When you could choose to get vaccinated, you could choose to wear a mask, you could choose to do that.

00:05:36.020 And now they're mandatory.

00:05:37.200 So when I hear some of the people talking about a climate emergency and a climate, you know, what do they want to do?

00:05:44.780 climate lockdowns, I start to think maybe, just maybe, we should be very wary of anyone telling

00:05:51.720 us that something like this is going to be voluntary and remain voluntary. So that's the

00:05:57.460 whole point of this here is that, yeah, Alibaba Group is developing this thing. For starters,

00:06:02.180 for the people of China, it may not be voluntary. We know the Chinese state has its tentacles in

00:06:07.060 pretty much all data collected by Chinese companies for whatever reason. And that's

00:06:11.880 true. Alibaba Group has not been immune from that in the past. And the other side of this is that

00:06:17.460 it's literally a climate version of the social credit system. It's the climate version of social

00:06:25.200 credit, of developing some mechanism of tracking your worth as a citizen vis-a-vis your so-called

00:06:31.760 carbon footprint. And he's talking about this as though it's a great thing. And most people

00:06:38.200 listening. It was interesting seeing the response to that on Twitter, because originally, I mean,

00:06:42.920 my audience is very fairly conservative. So originally it was people on the right saying,

00:06:47.540 see, I told you so, this is what they're planning. And then people on the left started to turn on it

00:06:52.640 as well, because people on the left don't like the elites with their private jets either for

00:06:57.100 different reasons. So then I had people on the left saying, why are you going after individuals

00:07:01.040 when you should be going after the oil companies and going after this? And I don't agree with their

00:07:05.700 output. I don't agree with their conclusion. But at a certain point, I'm like, you know, we've got

00:07:11.820 the right and the left that all seem to hate this. And I'm like, who's for it? Who's for it?

00:07:18.080 And this is one of the reasons when people have asked why it's so important, why people

00:07:22.160 are paying attention to the World Economic Forum is because the axis has shifted in politics.

00:07:28.620 And this goes back years. I mean, Donald Trump is a great example of this. In 2016, he didn't win

00:07:34.720 because of conventional conservative votes.

00:07:37.260 He won because there was a large contingent

00:07:39.800 of the left behinds,

00:07:40.800 the people that felt like politics

00:07:42.580 was no longer representing them.

00:07:44.480 We see this in the rise of the People's Party.

00:07:46.780 We see them the rise of a lot of European

00:07:48.520 right of center movements.

00:07:50.760 And you see this in all parts of the world.

00:07:53.500 And I say populism in its pure sense.

00:07:56.560 I'm not talking about populism

00:07:57.740 in the dirty, evil, scary sense

00:07:59.820 that the media uses it,

00:08:00.920 but this thing of the people,

00:08:02.740 what is good for the people.

00:08:04.720 And there's been an anti-elite pivot that has changed the axis of politics so much so

00:08:11.140 that people on the left and people on the right in some areas tend to coalesce behind this idea

00:08:17.200 that, you know, we've got some serious concerns with this. And I won't play the clip. You can

00:08:22.260 find it on True North if you'd like. But one of the interesting people I spoke to was this older

00:08:27.340 woman who's a climate protester from Switzerland. And, you know, normally the climate protesters

00:08:31.760 and I don't see eye to eye on a lot of things, and we probably don't, but she was not a hypocrite

00:08:36.980 because she and her little group of climate activists walked to Davos and they were just as

00:08:42.700 unnerved by the private jet flying limo riding elites as I was. In their case, they thought,

00:08:50.360 you know, these people aren't actually honest about what they want to do for the climate.

00:08:53.780 My view on this was that I think they're honest about what they want to do. They may not be honest

00:08:57.460 about their intentions and it becomes part of the control system so we've got lots more clips

00:09:04.380 and highlights that we're going to be pointing to as the show progresses but as i said i want to

00:09:10.000 take your questions here so if you're watching live on facebook or on youtube post them away

00:09:15.060 and we'll try to get to as many as possible here lynn said did it feel scary i know that you know

00:09:21.560 never never never did it feel scary i wasn't sure what the access situation would be like because

00:09:27.220 as I said beforehand, I wasn't accredited. They denied my accreditation request. And when I got

00:09:32.680 there, I knew that there was an open street. It's called the Promenade. It's where all the shops and

00:09:37.240 booths and all that are. But I didn't know how much I'd be able to go in and out and go around.

00:09:43.160 And no one gave me any grief at all. I shouldn't say that. I mean, some people didn't want to talk

00:09:48.520 to me. Some people ran away from me, like Mark Carney. We'll play that clip in a moment. But no

00:09:53.180 one gave me any issues. There was one point where I saw a group of police walking towards me and I'm

00:09:57.480 like, oh, is the jig up? But then they just got to me, said hello and walked past. So I didn't feel

00:10:03.100 any risk at all, but I appreciate your concern. I think that the one thing that is interesting

00:10:07.900 though, is that Davos is very expensive and it's very difficult to get to. So had to fly to Zurich.

00:10:13.020 I rented a car. You can also take the train. It's fairly expensive to stay in town. I couldn't stay

00:10:19.160 in town because the World Economic Forum controls all of the accommodations there. So I stayed in

00:10:24.240 another town over, which was a bit cheaper and was actually available. And as a result, if you were

00:10:30.560 a group of protesters or scrappy independent media, it's difficult to get there. And I think

00:10:36.860 that they've kind of enjoyed the World Economic Forum and the elites there, this idea of having

00:10:42.160 a safe space that others can't get there, which is why so many of them were just walking around

00:10:46.820 not really worried like you know I bumped into the president of Microsoft at one point and Mark

00:10:51.780 Carney the former governor of the Bank of England and the Bank of Canada and the head of the IMF I

00:10:56.540 didn't have my camera running at the time but you know she was three feet away from me at a certain

00:11:00.300 point so they're not used to having people there that aren't like them and I think that was it now

00:11:05.200 maybe maybe that'll change now that I was there and you know next time around it'll be more

00:11:09.080 challenging but I think that was why it was so easy to to get around let's see who else do we

00:11:14.800 have here um another question from someone actually a lot of people have asked this who

00:11:20.120 from canada attended so from the canadian government just one person and that was

00:11:25.740 france philippe champagne who's the industry and innovation minister and he was the only canadian

00:11:31.540 government delegate there was no trudeau no christian freeland no patty high do nothing like

00:11:36.540 that and he was on this panel called it was something about the jobs of tomorrow and he

00:11:41.840 talked about some stuff that really wasn't all that substantive. The one thing that I really

00:11:46.420 found annoying that he was trying to say is that young people don't want jobs. They only want jobs

00:11:51.680 that are green and jobs that are meaningful to them. And in order to be meaningful, they have

00:11:56.240 to be green and we have to transition people away and all of that. But even then, it's just that

00:12:01.760 regular old pablum that you get from some liberal ministers. And I would say it's hard to, I mean,

00:12:08.240 young people don't seem to want jobs now, which is why we have a labor shortage. So I can't

00:12:12.280 necessarily disagree with his premise. Although, again, I disagree wildly with the conclusion.

00:12:19.140 As far as non-government Canadian delegates, though, there were a fair amount. And I didn't

00:12:24.380 quite see, oh, I didn't see many of them. I did see some of them, like Michelle Romano, who's a

00:12:29.120 tech investor. And I think she was or is on the show Dragon's Den. She was there.

00:12:33.980 David Walmsley, who's the editor-in-chief of the Globe and Mail, he was there.

00:12:38.020 Apparently, I learned at the end, so I didn't get to actually look for any of them,

00:12:42.160 there were some higher-ups from SNC-Lavalin that were there.

00:12:46.100 And you can take from that what you will.

00:12:48.180 Who else was there?

00:12:49.020 SNC-Lavalin.

00:12:49.920 We had some people from some tech companies that were there and Canadian offices.

00:12:54.620 There was a Canadian journalist there from the Wall Street Journal, Elena Cherney.

00:12:59.060 And Wall Street Journal had a ton of people.

00:13:01.240 So there were a lot.

00:13:02.400 it. But again, I mean, most people, when they ask about the Canadian delegation, they're asking who

00:13:05.960 from government was there. And as far as that, it was a very small, austere delegation. It was

00:13:11.240 a delegation of one. And I have to wonder why that is. And I'm mixed on that. And I haven't

00:13:18.080 gotten any official answer from the government. I think it may be that they're very aware of how

00:13:23.960 more people are paying attention to the WEF right now. So I think because of the so-called

00:13:29.060 conspiracy theories. They were nervous about the appearance of going. I also think that right now

00:13:34.460 we have a cost of living crisis. We have an energy crisis. We have the world on the cusp of war with

00:13:39.740 Russia, Ukraine. The idea of billionaires gallivanting with politicians in the Swiss Alps

00:13:45.640 is not something that's easy to sell to an electorate right now. And I don't know in a

00:13:51.620 cost of living crisis and energy crisis, all of these things, if we want Canadian officials

00:13:56.500 on panels talking about the need to transition away from oil and gas when we can barely afford

00:14:02.140 energy right now. And their solutions are somehow even more expensive or their so-called solutions.

00:14:08.780 So I think that's what I would answer as that. But again, I mean, that's the question that keeps

00:14:13.120 coming in. Who from Canada is there? I'm going to work on a list of the ones that I know of,

00:14:17.640 and we'll publish that at some point. Someone says here, I understand the people at Davos feel

00:14:24.300 they are elites or superior people? After being there, do you feel you're as good or better than

00:14:30.960 the so-called elites? Well, unlike them, I don't view myself in terms of being better than or less

00:14:37.700 than other people. I try to be me. I try to be a good person. I try to treat people I encounter

00:14:42.200 with dignity unless they give me a reason to believe they shouldn't be treated in a dignified

00:14:47.080 way, which fortunately is very rare. But here's something I have to tell you about. And I posted

00:14:52.000 about this on Twitter. I should have told my producer, Sean, to get the graphic of it, but

00:14:56.500 there's this really hilarious and pathetic cast system with badges at Davos, with badges. So

00:15:03.920 everyone has to wear an ID badge. And normally at a conference, any conference I've ever been to,

00:15:09.520 I could not take a badge off quickly enough. It's like, if you need to wear one to get into the

00:15:13.880 room, you do it. But the second you can, you just rip it off because they always look tacky just

00:15:18.100 wearing all of these these these name tags from conferences at Davos people love them they love

00:15:23.160 the badges because the badges signify status and how important you are is reflected in the color

00:15:29.920 of your badge so the the best thing you could have is a white badge with a blue line and a white badge

00:15:37.220 with a blue line it has your name and big bold letters so what I was doing is when people walked

00:15:41.220 by who looked important you could tell I'd like google them and then see like oh this is uh oh

00:15:45.760 this is just the guy who works at Qualcomm or whatever. And then you say, oh, this is the head

00:15:50.120 of climate for the World Economic Forum. Okay, let's talk to her. But the white badge with the

00:15:55.020 blue line means you're one of the elites. You're one of the people that the WEF, the WEF as they

00:15:59.580 call it, has invited. If you've got a white badge with no blue line, it means you're the spouse of

00:16:05.840 someone who is invited. So you're kind of important, but not as important as them. If you're an orange

00:16:11.840 badge, then you're a journalist that's there covering it. But some journalists had white

00:16:16.780 badges because they were on like the WEF's handpicked list. So there were like New York

00:16:21.280 Times and Wall Street Journal people that had white badges because they were part of the handpicked

00:16:25.540 elites in the media that WEF wanted there. And then you've got like green badges were the

00:16:32.560 entourages of people. I'm not making this up. Green badges were the entourages and staff of

00:16:38.500 people with white badges. So the important white badge people would be surrounded by two or three 0.57

00:16:43.360 green badge people. So you could tell who the white badge people were by looking at the green

00:16:48.620 badges. But they love this. They all love the status that this signifies. And then there were

00:16:54.100 other ones that I couldn't figure out. One of them, the police had a black badge. But if you

00:16:59.240 were part of a security entourage that came from somewhere else, you'd have a purple badge with a

00:17:05.240 red line. And then there was a hotel badge that said, you're only allowed to go to the hotels,

00:17:09.360 but you can't go anywhere. Like it was just, it was this bizarre thing, but it shows how status

00:17:14.100 obsessed they are. And people talk about this. Like I was chatting up one guy who was actually

00:17:18.460 on my flight to Zurich and he was going to WEF, but he didn't have credentials or anything.

00:17:24.040 And the way he talked about it, he's like, yeah, but that's not, I don't have a white badge or

00:17:27.040 anything. So like, he was like so sad that he was going there and didn't have a wife, a white badge.

00:17:32.760 So that was, I think, the big challenge here.

00:17:35.760 So in any case, we will, who's called,

00:17:38.700 someone's calling me right now

00:17:39.920 and it looks like a number I know, but I'm on air.

00:17:42.640 So you get my undivided attention.

00:17:44.540 Well, I don't know if it's undivided

00:17:45.460 if I look to check the phone,

00:17:46.620 but I guess for the most part, undivided.

00:17:48.720 I want to play another clip

00:17:50.280 and this one just shows the divide

00:17:52.180 between real people and Davos people.

00:17:57.300 And I'm actually going to play two clips for you,

00:17:59.300 but one of them I think did very well

00:18:02.100 because people saw just how out of touch it was making them feel like they were and just so

00:18:09.060 disconnected from the reality of the people that their policies are governing. And this was a

00:18:14.840 discussion on energy and climate, like 90% of the sessions. And it was a Norwegian, the CEO of a

00:18:21.700 Norwegian finance company named Christian Brathen or Brathen. And she was talking about the transition

00:18:27.680 away from oil and gas and just contextually here specifically its effect on small and medium-sized

00:18:33.920 businesses who she was saying understandably so don't have the means to go go along with this the

00:18:39.540 way they giant companies do giant companies they have the money they can go with these pie in the

00:18:44.080 sky ideas but she was saying small and medium businesses is not as easy for them and did that

00:18:48.700 mean we should hold back? Oh, not at all. We need to accept that there will be some pain in the

00:18:57.920 process. The pace that we need will open up for missteps. It will open up for shortages of energy.

00:19:07.400 It will create inflationary pressures. And maybe we need to start talking about that,

00:19:11.560 that that pain is actually worth it. Because if we don't, there's no business case, there's no

00:19:17.440 economy there's there's no welfare but but so far i think we are have been a little bit careful

00:19:22.080 actually talking about the pain in the short term that is likely to come from from the from this

00:19:27.440 very important change see it's all abstract to them it's all abstract to them oh yeah the pain

00:19:34.640 the pain yeah it's going to be there but it's all worth it because if we don't have pain then

00:19:38.400 there's going to be no climate and no economy and no world and we're all going to be dead so

00:19:42.320 it's go along with the green agenda or die is basically the message and if you're a business

00:19:48.720 owner that can't afford to pay your electricity bill or your heating bill a load of good this oh

00:19:55.400 but it's all worth it it's all worth it it's all going to be good in the long run a load of good

00:19:59.040 that message is and these people as we know don't even practice what they preach one great example

00:20:06.620 of this and i'm glad the moderator did it was when they surveyed the room to ask about what

00:20:12.680 they're doing to reduce their carbon footprint specifically with electric vehicles which of

00:20:18.060 course are supposed to be this ascendant thing that we're all supposed to be on but uh well

00:20:21.700 not the people of davos so i'm going to throw this immediately out to the audience and say

00:20:30.140 how many of you are driving an electric vehicle at the moment

00:20:34.700 one two three four so i would say that probably constitutes less than five percent of the persons

00:20:45.020 uh sitting here in this room

00:20:47.200 and i don't know if that's what i mean she that might have been the point she was going for

00:20:55.380 i don't think it was like it was i said it was a cell phone because i think it was a cell phone

00:20:59.360 for the wef not a cell phone for her she's proving that all of these people are saying it but when

00:21:04.100 push comes to shove they're not doing it and it's the the private jets it's the limos i mean this

00:21:10.020 clip ended up being again not i i'd say the most exceptional journalism because it was just you

00:21:15.360 know pointing my phone out the window of the car and documenting what was happening on the road

00:21:22.100 but people loved it. People loved this video. So, I mean, again, 12 seconds. And I started

00:21:41.880 filming late because at first I was just staring at it and it was a Beamer, Beamer, Beamer,

00:21:46.240 Mercedes, Mercedes, Mercedes, Beamer, Mercedes, Audi, Mercedes. Like it was just this lineup

00:21:51.760 up of limos waiting to get into Davos because the security checkpoint was slowing them down.

00:21:57.040 And there were a couple of hybrids and electric cars in the mix as well.

00:22:00.520 If you ordered an Uber in Davos, your two options were green or black. And black is like the limo

00:22:08.120 and green is, you know, the eco one. And you better believe all the people were taking the

00:22:13.080 limos, which were just lined up as people were trying to get through. So these things are sort

00:22:18.360 of cliches now. We all know that that's what happens. We all know that's what these things

00:22:23.760 are about. But seeing it firsthand that it's not just a cliche, it's not just a punchline,

00:22:28.720 this is actually revealing the divide between the governors and the governed was, I think,

00:22:34.240 interesting to see. And it was almost reaffirming in a way that, yes, this stereotype is not just

00:22:40.200 a cheap laugh. It's genuinely, genuinely this font of hypocrisy that we see behind the world

00:22:48.260 Economic Forum and a lot of the people going there. And I don't know if we have, let me check

00:22:54.260 with my producer here. I don't know, do we have the video of going after the head of climate,

00:23:00.060 that woman? We do. Okay. So this one is great. No, he says no now. Not the woman. Okay. Never

00:23:07.120 mind on that one. But there's this one video where the head of climate for WEF was walking by and I

00:23:12.100 asked her, you know, is, do you tell people not to travel by private jet? And she turned around and

00:23:17.080 said, you know, I've got to go. And then she walked away. And I'm like, you know, that had

00:23:22.140 more syllables than yes or no. But to his credit, I did speak later on to someone else who is also

00:23:30.160 a higher up at WEF. And he said that they do actually tell people not to travel by private

00:23:34.320 jet. He took a few moments and chatted and said they do tell people, but some do anyway. So

00:23:38.700 perhaps there's a bit of internal strife within the World Economic Forum here. Anyway, getting

00:23:44.900 back to your questions here, I go on tangents every now and then. Oh, on that note, Anita says,

00:23:50.320 did you ever get an answer about the elite's carbon footprint to get to Davos? Short answer,

00:23:55.420 no. But we did hear all about how they try to do things like offsets and green and sustainability

00:24:00.340 and all of that. But a lot of it, I think, is smoke and mirrors. If not for the organization,

00:24:05.940 certainly for the participants. Patty writes, did they have a lot of freedom protesters?

00:24:11.940 Zero, zero that I saw.

00:24:14.520 There was one group of climate protesters that I saw on the first day.

00:24:19.920 I met a couple of individual people that were locals that were not WEF fans at all,

00:24:24.660 but no freedom protesters.

00:24:26.140 And I don't know if that was because, as I said earlier, it's very difficult and expensive

00:24:30.820 to get there, or if it's just because people weren't doing it.

00:24:35.460 Or if, I mean, one example of this is that in order to protest in Davos, in the town,

00:24:41.480 you need a permit and the police say on the website that if you don't have one they will

00:24:48.060 use whatever means they have to to clear you out and i don't know how well they were enforcing that

00:24:53.220 like there were a couple of little demonstrations on climate and there was one on like ukraine

00:24:57.620 but i don't know if these people had permits and police were leaving them alone for that reason or

00:25:03.020 if they just didn't care but that's also something that could be off-putting maybe

00:25:06.800 they weren't issuing permits to people that were there to protest for freedom

00:25:10.760 And let's see what else we have here. Do you think they're going to completely stop the

00:25:18.000 independent press next year? So this is an interesting question. And I want to go back

00:25:25.080 a little bit because originally what I wanted to do was cover COP26 in Glasgow in November,

00:25:30.620 which was the big climate summit where all the heads of government were going to gather in

00:25:34.660 Scotland and they were going to get together and plan the sequel to the Paris Agreement.

00:25:39.000 And we went through a huge lengthy process with the United Nations to try to get accredited.

00:25:44.260 And at the end, the UN said, no, we're not accrediting you.

00:25:47.340 And we thought about going anyway and ultimately opted against it because we knew that the

00:25:52.960 UN would have the whole country controlled and we couldn't even get, I looked up where

00:25:58.660 the security perimeter was going to be.

00:26:00.080 I wouldn't have even been able to get on the street to interview people coming and going.

00:26:04.660 and then world economic forum came up and we said well you know this is outdoors it's an open city

00:26:11.040 it's a they can control the venue but they can't control the city so we thought even without being

00:26:16.160 accredited we'd be able to get somewhere where important people would be that we'd want to put

00:26:21.000 questions to and we did that and we still tried to get accredited and then as we reported a while

00:26:26.540 back they were only letting i mean to even request accreditation to even request accreditation you

00:26:33.760 had to be invited and we asked for the invitation we asked for the password to get to the accreditation

00:26:40.320 portal and no one responded no one responded so we said we're going anyway now i i will say

00:26:45.920 when i was there and i actually did get to speak to one person at weff he personally said uh you

00:26:52.160 know to reach out to him directly next time for the next one and he didn't make any offer he didn't

00:26:57.600 make any promises uh someone else said andrew did you drink the kool-aid no no i'm not like a west

00:27:02.080 chill now. But he had said to reach out to him directly, which I will do if we're going back.

00:27:07.320 And that's something that I will do to try to get accredited. Because even though I'm very happy

00:27:12.300 about the coverage that we were able to get from outside, I also think that to be in the room and

00:27:18.000 in the venue and to have that additional level of access is important. But let me just explain

00:27:23.480 the access situation here. Because there was the Davos Congress Center, which is where the actual

00:27:28.740 event is taking place. And there were the hotels, some of the hotels were restricted only to people

00:27:33.740 with the, you know, special status or whatever, but the streets were open. And on the street,

00:27:39.920 you had all of these different houses and shops and booths. And some of these, some of these were

00:27:44.400 very weird and they were all fake. Like that's the great thing for the people that are all about

00:27:48.340 renewability and sustainability. They're fake. Like, I think we have a picture of the SAP house,

00:27:53.200 which is one of these things. So you look at this building and this is not the way the building

00:27:58.160 looks normally they've put up that facade and that's one of the the more muted ones there was

00:28:03.180 another one as well i'll show you the saudi house uh and the saudi house has uh there i think we

00:28:08.540 have a close-up too where you can see the intricate woodwork that they'll not that one no the uh of

00:28:14.820 the building itself whatever it is but there's a where you see the intricate woodwork that they've

00:28:19.880 put up and it's all fake it's all phony and since we did put it up let's throw that saudi cafe up

00:28:25.060 again. So Saudi Arabia, you can just go into the Saudi cafe and you can get a coffee or a pastry,

00:28:31.860 or I had this delicious fig pudding or date pudding that had like a lime sorbet on it.

00:28:37.140 And it came with a Saudi coffee on the side. There it is promoting Saudi tourism. And this

00:28:43.080 is the thing. Now I did this for the comedy of it. I'm not like a Saudi shill now, but everyone

00:28:47.340 was going along with it. Everyone was happy. Everyone was hunky dory. We've all decided we 0.99

00:28:51.340 like saudi arabia now and we're going to go along with this lie that they're this hospitable tourist

00:28:57.480 destination and it wasn't just the saudi cafe muhammad bin salman al saad the crown prince of

00:29:04.480 saudi arabia he has a foundation the muhammad bin salman foundation and he was giving out free ice

00:29:10.260 cream and they had a little ice cream booth set up outside the muhammad bin salman foundation

00:29:14.860 and you could get uh as you see there's saffron cardamom or i forget what the other one is there's

00:29:21.080 the third one, whatever on the bottom is, you can get different types of ice cream. And oh,

00:29:24.420 they had sprinkles you could put on and it was so delicious and no one wearing hijabs or kneecaps 1.00

00:29:29.300 there. And we're all supposed to just forget that wasn't like the world outraged when 0.99

00:29:34.400 Mohammed bin Salman ordered that journalist Jamal Khashoggi killed. I guess not because

00:29:40.640 once they give you ice cream, it doesn't matter anymore. But that was the whole thing. So much

00:29:45.240 of it was just phony. Everyone just going along with it, fake buildings, fake Saudi hospitality.

00:29:51.080 and and all of this stuff was open i mean i i walked into the saudi cafe i walked into india

00:29:55.640 house i walked into great i didn't go to greece house but i walked by greece house and they had

00:30:00.360 poland house and ukraine house and all of these things and all of these companies had these uh

00:30:05.240 displays and parties and some of them were invite only like facebook and google wouldn't let you in

00:30:10.520 unless you had an invitation but others were all too happy to bring bring you in like intel was

00:30:15.400 every time i walked by there was this guy from the intel house that was telling me oh you should come

00:30:19.240 we've got snacks, we've got food. And I mean, he knew looking at me that I, the snacks would get

00:30:23.580 me in. Uh, and I never actually ended up making it, but, uh, uh, maybe I, I had the date pudding

00:30:28.440 from Saudi Arabia, but I didn't have the orders from Intel. So this is the type of stuff that in

00:30:33.080 Davos, your life is just constructed around. It's like, which party do I want to go to? Because

00:30:37.800 this is all they're doing. I mean, one protester called it corporate Disneyland, which I felt was

00:30:42.860 a very good way of describing it. Uh, Lynn writes again, uh, were you able to get into any of the

00:30:48.860 meeting. So as I said, not officially, a lot of them were live streamed, but I was able to get

00:30:53.240 into all of these other spots, which were more revealing that were not official to WEF, but were

00:30:58.520 adjacent to it. And they were targeting the audiences because what's happening is these

00:31:02.760 companies spend millions and millions of dollars. They literally take over businesses that exist

00:31:08.360 throughout the year. And for, you know, 51 weeks, they're, you know, a clothing store or a ski shop,

00:31:15.000 But for one week a year, they evict them, empty everything out, fill it in with stuff

00:31:19.980 connected to this.

00:31:20.760 And they host these parties there and they host displays and companies are trying to

00:31:25.800 bring in government officials to, you know, make relationships and get, you know, ease

00:31:30.240 regulatory burdens.

00:31:31.240 And then governments will hold them like the Namibian government and the Greek government

00:31:35.300 and Indian government.

00:31:36.440 And they all hold these because they want to start attracting capital.

00:31:39.660 So that's the thing here.

00:31:41.220 You've got this fusion of public and private sector that is where things get very, very

00:31:47.080 dicey because you don't know what discussions are happening behind closed doors.

00:31:51.000 You don't know what these relationships are forging are.

00:31:55.460 And that's where I think people are very uncomfortable and why it starts to look like

00:31:59.560 a plutocracy or a kleptocracy of just governing by, you know, wheeling, dealing, corrupt elites

00:32:05.440 and the wealthy and all of that.

00:32:06.760 And that's why people are so, I think, justifiably skeptical of what's happening here.

00:32:13.340 Let's see what else we have here.

00:32:15.260 Are we going to own nothing and be happy about it?

00:32:17.760 You know, for people that have previously talked about this idea of in the future, owning

00:32:22.840 nothing and being happy about it, they sure tend to own a lot of things.

00:32:26.660 They sure tend to own a lot of things.

00:32:30.080 Lisa said, how did you get the clips?

00:32:32.180 Did you attend the sessions?

00:32:34.120 No, I mentioned this here in the past.

00:32:36.500 a lot of their stuff is public. They have private panels, but a lot of their panels are public. And

00:32:41.660 I think we need to focus on what it is that they want to talk about. They're very proud of a lot

00:32:47.120 of these things. They're very proud of this idea of championing so many of these discussions. I

00:32:53.260 mean, just take a look at Klaus Schwab. This was the chairman and founder of WEF, who at the very

00:32:57.980 beginning was talking about how what's happening there is going to alter the future, the course of

00:33:02.100 human history let's also be clear the future is not just happening the future is built by us

00:33:13.940 by a powerful community as you here in this room we have the means to improve the states of the

00:33:23.900 But two conditions are necessary. The first one is that we act all as stakeholders of larger communities,

00:33:36.900 that we serve not only our self-interests, but we serve the community.

00:33:42.900 That's what we call stakeholder responsibility. And second, that we collaborate.

00:33:49.900 And this is the reason why you find many opportunities here during the meeting to engage into very action and impact-oriented initiatives to make progress related to specific issues on the global agenda.

00:34:10.560 The future is built by us!

00:34:14.500 Yeah, that's pretty much it.

00:34:16.180 And you have to wonder, I mean, the most charitable defense of this is that it's all bluster, is that it's all just phony and nonsense and that they're all just so pretending to be important and puffing their chest and all of that.

00:34:28.080 That's like the most charitable defense, which is weird in and of itself.

00:34:32.440 But that's the pitch.

00:34:33.880 That's Klaus Schwab's pitch to companies, to countries, that if you come here, this is the place you get things done.

00:34:41.300 And I would look at this and say, well, people are spending millions of dollars.

00:34:46.760 Government officials, when they show up, make big policy announcements there.

00:34:51.340 Would they be doing this if it were nothing?

00:34:57.440 Would they be doing this if the power wasn't in the room?

00:35:00.780 If the future wasn't being built by the people there?

00:35:03.980 I don't think they would.

00:35:05.800 I don't think they would at all.

00:35:07.160 And this idea that Schwab indicated near the end there, stakeholder capitalism, that's what they call it.

00:35:15.300 It's this idea that capitalism is no longer about shareholders.

00:35:18.620 It's no longer about who owns the company.

00:35:20.280 It's about companies and capitalists that have to be beholden to government interest, to community interest, to social interest, to UN interest.

00:35:28.200 And it's about diluting this idea of property and this idea of capitalism.

00:35:33.400 And one thing, I should have taken a picture of it.

00:35:36.760 I didn't. But there are these things called Sustainable Development Goals, which are UN

00:35:41.080 initiatives that are about like gender equality and education and sanitation and climate.

00:35:48.340 And they're very big. And the SDGs are kind of like the backbone of government priorities.

00:35:52.540 And also a lot of companies have signed on to SDGs. And there's an SDG logo, which is like a

00:35:58.280 semicircle or a full circle with these little wedges that almost look like trivial pursuit

00:36:03.160 pieces and they're all different colors each one representing one of the sdgs one of the

00:36:08.600 sustainable development goals and you'd walk around and you'd see people wearing these sdg pins

00:36:14.360 and you'd look at them and say well that uh oh that must be a un employee so you'd walk up to

00:36:18.520 them and there was one guy i'm like oh this guy must be with the un and i walked up to him and

00:36:22.120 it was brad smith who's the president of microsoft and then someone else is wearing a an sdg pin and

00:36:27.720 you walk up and it's like oh it's the head of sales force and someone else is wearing an sdg

00:36:32.120 pin and it's like someone else who runs some company. And you're like, why are these corporations

00:36:36.800 and their leaders wearing United Nations pins? And it's because the line between public and

00:36:44.640 private simply doesn't exist in Davos. Someone says here, do you think Klaus Schwab is the head

00:36:53.500 of it all? No. Well, I mean, he's the head of the WEF, but no, I don't think he's sitting back

00:36:59.900 back in the mountains of the Swiss Alps and pulling the strings on Canada or the UK or

00:37:06.180 France or anything like that. And this is where I think going there was important because there

00:37:10.620 needed to be this nuanced discussion about what was happening. I think the problem is you've got

00:37:15.260 WEF is putting out this ideological framework that a lot of companies and countries want to buy into.

00:37:22.940 And I think that when you have people like Justin Trudeau that love this agenda,

00:37:27.540 that love these initiatives, it is dangerous.

00:37:31.040 It's the same as signing a treaty.

00:37:32.560 I mean, everyone's been up in arms about this,

00:37:34.780 the amendments to the international health regulations

00:37:37.120 that are being worked on in Geneva, Switzerland,

00:37:40.560 the World Health Organization this week.

00:37:42.560 And a lot of people are saying

00:37:43.900 it's going to surrender sovereignty.

00:37:45.480 Well, it does.

00:37:46.000 I mean, a country can voluntarily exit a treaty

00:37:49.160 anytime it wants.

00:37:50.800 The point is that when a country is part of a treaty,

00:37:53.700 it signals their intent to uphold that.

00:37:57.540 I mean, in international law, nothing, nothing can prevent a country from withdrawing a treaty.

00:38:03.100 And even if a country is in a treaty and breaks the rules, it's technically illegal, but there's

00:38:08.500 no enforcement of it. There's no higher power that can make a country do something.

00:38:13.920 The problem is that these countries want to. And this is what people forget. My issue with WEF is

00:38:20.500 not that Klaus Schwab is running Canada. My issue with WEF is that they're talking about what I

00:38:24.880 think are very dangerous and radical ideas that in Canada, government officials seem to love

00:38:30.380 and want to go along with. That's the big risk here. And that's what we need to stop. And when

00:38:38.380 all of these people are brought together in one room, why do you think it's so important for them

00:38:42.600 to have an in-person conference? They could do it all by Zoom. They could do this all by video

00:38:47.620 conference. It's because they want these people all under one roof. They want Francois-Philippe

00:38:53.480 champagne, to be able to shake hands with the head of some tech company behind the scenes. And

00:38:57.800 maybe they're going to work on, hey, I want you to set up an office in Canada. Maybe they're going

00:39:01.980 to be talking about policy and it's taking place in this very untransparent way. So that I think

00:39:08.540 is the risk of WEF to Canada. It's not an intergovernmental organization. It's not a body

00:39:14.520 that's created by countries. It's a body that's created by the private sector, but almost exists

00:39:20.940 as this like shadow un organization i mean canada gave wef i think it was like three million dollars

00:39:27.180 we reported over the last several years but most of uh salesforce or actually there's a freudian

00:39:33.020 slip most of wef's money comes from the private sector salesforce uh which is a tech company is

00:39:38.300 a big backer of it microsoft is a big backer most of their company money comes from the private

00:39:43.180 sector and and the left should hate that the left should hate that that we have all these government

00:39:48.300 officials bowing at uh bowing before this private sector organization but it's because they're

00:39:54.060 trying to make it so murky and it's all about the elites against everyone else more than it's about

00:39:59.980 left versus right and i don't think this should be just a so-called conservative conspiracy theory

00:40:06.300 to take aim at what's happening here and again no one wants to talk about the obvious no one

00:40:11.100 wants to talk about the effect especially from an oil and gas producing nation like canada

00:40:15.180 of what these policies are going to mean i mean mark carney who's the former governor of the bank

00:40:19.980 of canada then he was the governor of the bank of england now he's the un's special envoy for

00:40:25.020 climate i asked him about it and he didn't have time because it was a spontaneous interview

00:40:32.780 hi mr carney i never do uh i never do uh spontaneous i understand my one question is

00:40:41.580 because the Canadian oil and gas sector survive the net zero approach that's being promoted here

00:40:47.660 I as I said I never do you want if you want an interview with me uh like everybody else

00:40:53.340 you make a request okay and will you accept that like everybody else okay

00:41:00.060 so I will take him up on that I am going to make a request because I would love to speak with him

00:41:04.540 and I should say just as a fun story Mark Carney was walking around non-stop I saw him the day after

00:41:11.580 And I said, you know, can we do an interview now?

00:41:13.420 Because it's less spontaneous.

00:41:14.640 And to his credit, he laughed and said, well, think of how much less spontaneous it'll be tomorrow.

00:41:19.580 So the answer was still no.

00:41:21.860 So I'll still request an interview with him.

00:41:23.920 I'll still go through those proper channels.

00:41:25.700 I don't think he's going to take it.

00:41:27.360 Because, again, they're not used to being around people that are going to ask challenging questions.

00:41:33.120 And True North's coverage, I should say, did something that mattered internationally.

00:41:38.720 Rebel News was also there.

00:41:39.820 Abhi Yamini, who you actually saw in the frame with Mark Carney. And he spoke to Mark Carney

00:41:44.160 after me and didn't get anywhere either. But I mean, Rebel News did great work there. True North,

00:41:49.940 I'm very proud of the work that I did and our team back in Canada. And the one thing that I think

00:41:54.780 needs to be said here is that no one else was doing it. No one else was talking about it.

00:42:00.800 And the clips that went viral, the clips of the Alibaba guy or this woman from Australia who

00:42:07.860 was talking about a recalibration of freedom of speech. I won't play it, but you've seen the

00:42:11.840 clip now. I mean, these clips that were circulating were because we were monitoring them

00:42:16.360 and putting those out. And it was everyone taking our footage and sharing. And we're glad because

00:42:21.020 we wanted people to see this. We wanted people to know what was happening. But so much of this

00:42:27.220 takes place in the shadows. And one thing that I'm particularly proud of here is speaking to

00:42:34.820 the Indian Minister of Gas and Petroleum, who on the panel, on the discussion, was saying,

00:42:42.300 yeah, we need to accelerate our transition and move off of oil and gas and green energy.

00:42:46.500 And they did a survey on that panel. And in that survey, they talked about how all these people

00:42:51.800 around the table were wanting to prioritize the energy transition. And he had a very different

00:42:58.020 note when I caught up with him privately on the streets of Davos.

00:43:01.060 on a panel about oil and gas and energy this morning do you think phasing out of fossil fuels

00:43:08.880 is actually a realistic goal look uh i said what i had to but you know if you were to do that survey

00:43:15.460 in uh different parts of the world if you were to do it for instance in south ash south asia or

00:43:20.900 africa or in latin america you'd get results that might be a little different from the kind of

00:43:26.180 results you're getting here so so he just admits that yeah when all of a sudden done you know

00:43:32.360 everywhere else in the world they're going to view this a lot differently than they are around the

00:43:36.420 table here and i thought that was an obvious point but it was a very candid one and i'm thinking you

00:43:41.280 know why uh why didn't he mention it in the room why didn't he mention it in the room if it was

00:43:46.480 just so self-evident but that's the whole point they all sit around the table and sit on their

00:43:51.000 panels and they talk about the world and the people in it in abstractions without understanding

00:43:55.680 that they are real people with real challenges. And that was why it was so important to be there,

00:44:01.320 to have a voice and to call out the elites, to put questions to them. I didn't play every video

00:44:07.380 that we did. We published a lot online. I think we'll have some more in the days ahead. But I

00:44:12.040 wanted to stress the importance of actually having independent media on the ground there.

00:44:16.440 And again, I mean, Switzerland is not an inexpensive place. And I almost feel bad. I

00:44:20.480 almost feel like it's self-indulgent to ask for support to do this. But I guarantee you it wasn't

00:44:25.800 a vacation. This was something that was very difficult work, but I think it was very important

00:44:30.200 work. And I have a couple of questions. I mean, the first is if you can support this and cover

00:44:36.260 our costs to have been there and covered this, please do. You can head on over to donate.tnc.news.

00:44:42.980 And the other that I would ask you is, would you want us to go back? Because they're going to be

00:44:46.980 doing this in January. And by all accounts, it's going to be a much bigger ordeal, because this

00:44:52.940 time, a lot of leaders sat it out. Justin Trudeau wasn't there. Boris Johnson wasn't there. Emmanuel

00:44:58.280 Macron wasn't there. The only G7 leader they had was Olaf Scholz of Germany. And then they had like

00:45:04.900 Ursula von der Leyen of the European Commission and all the global people. But even then, not a

00:45:09.980 lot of them. So if they're going to go back to full strength WEF in January, which is their regular

00:45:16.380 schedule, ski season in the Alps. Would you want us to be there and cover this again? Because right

00:45:22.840 now, I mean, anyone can just look at the comment sections of our videos over the last few weeks.

00:45:28.580 And everyone has been asking about WEF for months and months and months and months and all of the

00:45:36.140 questions and stories and the appetite for content. So I don't know how much of that's going to be

00:45:40.280 there in January. So let us know what you think in the comments here. Should we go back in January?

00:45:46.380 and basically try to put, again, these questions to these people that tend to speak in abstractions.

00:45:52.160 Now, the one thing I did for fun, the one thing I did for fun, I didn't do it for me, I did it for

00:45:57.420 all of you, because I try to be a self-sacrificing person, and I'll surrender my dignity on the altar

00:46:02.280 of comedy. There was this field, this field, oh no, we don't even have it. Oh, I was going to play

00:46:08.440 a clip for you to mock myself, and I'm just being told that we don't actually have it, so I don't

00:46:13.780 actually get to mock myself, but if you head to my Twitter, it's the pin tweet of, I decided,

00:46:19.540 I know Julie Andrews in Sound of Music was in the Austrian Alps rather than the Swiss Alps,

00:46:23.320 but it just looked so perfect. So I replicated a classic movie moment. And that is something that

00:46:29.600 I will, you can look that up yourself. That's like part of the after show. That's like the,

00:46:34.260 the bonus, the bonus video I did to, to appeal to the, the donors of this, but in all honesty,

00:46:40.420 I want to just thank all of you who shared our content.

00:46:43.280 I mean, we had a global, global audience for this.

00:46:46.080 Truly, we had people from around the world.

00:46:48.240 I was doing nightly hits on GB News in the UK.

00:46:51.080 Today, I did a couple of radio interviews

00:46:53.120 about this in the United States.

00:46:54.540 People around the world were following True North coverage.

00:46:58.180 And that was only because of you that believed in this,

00:47:00.680 that wanted to make it happen and amplified it.

00:47:02.620 So thank you to you all.

00:47:04.280 Glad to be back here.

00:47:05.640 Thank you so much.

00:47:06.360 or Duncan Shen, as they say in the Swiss Alps, where I was anyway.

00:47:11.560 But we'll all have a lot more to say about this next week when the show returns.

00:47:16.480 So have a great weekend, everyone.

00:47:17.920 This is Canada's most irreverent talk show on True North, The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:47:21.500 Thank you, God bless, and good day to you all.

00:47:25.440 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:47:27.940 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:47:36.360 Thank you.

Juno News - May 27, 2022

Davos debrief

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