Juno News - January 17, 2023


How influential is the WEF？

Hosted by
Andrew Lawton
Mentioned
Trudeau Antonio Guterres Xavier Battelle Naguere Woods Biala Raschia Bill Browder Zelenska Schwab
Andrew Lawton and Russell Brand discuss the World Economic Forum PM Trudeau launches into 5-minute tirade against Poilievre and Convoy

Episode Stats


Length

6 minutes

Words per minute

174.36

Word count

1,095

Sentence count

56

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Day two of the World Economic Forum 2023 Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, raises the question of just how influential the WEF is. Is it just a glorified sales conference, or is it a place to exchange ideas and knowledge with world leaders?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Day two of the World Economic Forum 2023 annual meeting here in Davos and obviously this was the
00:00:06.360 first main day of the substantive policy-oriented sessions between media leaders, political leaders
00:00:12.240 and also business leaders, all of whom converge for what the World Economic Forum says is an
00:00:17.540 exchange of ideas. It raises the question of just how influential the WEF is. There are people on
00:00:23.460 one end of the spectrum that think it's the shadowy cabal of puppeteers controlling everything
00:00:27.340 that happens in the world and on the other end you have people that are very dismissive of it all
00:00:31.300 that say it's just a glorified sales conference where it's all talk and no action. Like anything
00:00:36.880 the truth is probably somewhere in the middle but one of the things worth noting is that some of the
00:00:42.180 members of the WEF pay up to 650,000 US dollars a year just to be members of the organization.
00:00:50.080 Coming to Davos costs even more money. Bill Browder, the anti-Putin activist and financier said that
00:00:55.560 the price tag for him to come this year was going to be $250,000. Now politicians come for free which
00:01:03.260 begs the question of what it is that business leaders see value in when they pony over almost
00:01:08.660 one million dollars to be here. Is it just cash for access to politicians? What is it that ordinary
00:01:15.320 people around the world are getting out of this? Some of the policy ideas that were put forward on day
00:01:20.220 one are some things that politicians around the world have been all too eager to implement. For
00:01:25.380 example Oxford University professor Naguere Woods advocated for a global carbon price but a real one
00:01:31.600 that's going to show businesses they have nowhere to hide. So what is what is really required now
00:01:37.380 on the energy transition and the thing that's missing is clear permanent government goal posts.
00:01:44.460 It's the one minimum thing that governments need to do whether it's the Chinese government,
00:01:48.860 the European Union government, African governments or the American government and that's to set the
00:01:55.020 rules that create an ecosystem for every company in the world to then make excellent decisions on the
00:02:01.920 energy transition. You know first obviously a carbon price not a pretend price but a real carbon price
00:02:09.840 that that companies can know is not going to change. Companies need to know that the goal posts
00:02:16.380 won't shift every year or every three years or every election cycle. So and I think that's the that's the
00:02:22.200 one thing about the energy transition that we now absolutely have to set our minds to. We shouldn't let
00:02:27.000 it become a partisan football. Interestingly enough I ran into Klaus Schwab himself the founder
00:02:33.000 and chairman of the World Economic Forum and he was speaking to another journalist at the time and said
00:02:38.040 that he's actually never said anything to persuade politicians.
00:02:42.180 I'm very often expressing myself except now I have to explain why we have chosen to see but you never
00:02:49.660 have heard from me political statements or economic statements which are let's say in any way
00:02:56.720 influencing political personalities. I tried to ask a follow-up question but he very quickly went into
00:03:06.200 the speaker's room and said he had somewhere else he had to be. But if it's true that Klaus Schwab and
00:03:11.200 the World Economic Forum are not here to influence politicians what's the point? Moreover how do we
00:03:16.140 explain this comment of Mr. Schwab's about penetrating cabinets including in Canada?
00:03:20.580 But what we are very proud of now is the young generation like Prime Minister Trudeau, President of
00:03:30.800 Argentina and so on, that we penetrate the cabinets. So yesterday I was at a reception for Prime Minister Trudeau and I
00:03:43.740 know that half of this cabinet or even more half of this cabinet are for our actually young global leaders of the World Economic Forum.
00:03:55.800 What exactly is it that world leaders get out of being here? This is the question that I've set out to ask and
00:04:02.800 as it so happened I had the opportunity to put it directly to one such world leader today, Xavier Battelle, the Prime Minister of Luxembourg.
00:04:10.740 First and foremost I asked him how he rationalizes being here as a politician when business leaders are paying to be in the presence of politicians.
00:04:18.800 I was just wondering what you think it is about politicians being here for free while business leaders are paying money for access to them. What do you think of that?
00:04:25.800 I think it's a place to exchange and you can be inside, you can be outside. I think less people are inside than outside and the place is to exchange and I think everybody who wants to exchange has his place here.
00:04:39.800 How does being here help the citizens of Luxembourg?
00:04:42.800 It's a fact to discuss about the situation and to have exchanges. I just will meet now the leader of the opposition of Biala Raschia. I met Madame Zelenska this morning so it's not only about business, it's about also exchanging with countries when they have difficult moments for the time.
00:05:00.800 I was very grateful that the Prime Minister took the opportunity to stop and chat. He was very friendly and I appreciate his candor.
00:05:07.800 I'm still not convinced that if you're a Luxembourg citizen you're benefiting from your Prime Minister being here any more than I think Canadians are benefiting from Christia Freeland being here.
00:05:16.800 The question of how influential the WEF is is still an important one to ask. It may be losing its shine slightly.
00:05:22.800 For example, there is just one G7 leader in attendance this year and that is Olaf Scholz, the Chancellor of Germany.
00:05:28.800 Now that's not to say there aren't heavy hitters. We've got Ursula von der Leyen from the European Union. 1.00
00:05:33.800 We've got the head of the International Monetary Fund, Antonio Guterres from the United Nations.
00:05:38.800 And obviously very real discussions are taking place.
00:05:41.800 Now the WEF has a full agenda, a full program, you can look at it.
00:05:45.800 But there are also side sessions taking place. Discussions on the sidelines that are not advertised, that are not open to media.
00:05:52.800 And we don't know who's in these discussions, what they're about.
00:05:55.800 And that's where people would be very reasonable to ask whether politicians and business leaders coming together under one roof in this forum is actually such a good idea.
00:06:04.800 For True North from Davos, I'm Andrew Lawton.
00:06:06.800 Goodcepts.
00:06:07.800 Good,UP.
00:06:11.800 Not couple words.
00:06:12.800 Yes, welcome from but you have the trouble.