00:12:24.880Do we have the clip of Danielle Smith?
00:12:27.980We do not have the clip of Danielle Smith.
00:12:29.700We'll get that clip in a little bit later.
00:12:31.380But basically, Danielle Smith gave a very reasoned response to this, which was that she does not in any of her time talking to people in Alberta have anyone coming up to her and saying, you know, Premier, what I really think you should do is go to the Swiss mountains, hang out with the Davos crowd, because I think that is going to really help Albertans out or in the Canadian context to help Canadians out.
00:12:53.420So what exactly is so dangerous about the Davos agenda?
00:12:56.980Because admittedly, they get credit for a lot more than they do.
00:13:00.200Sometimes the criticism is just directed at some wacky person saying something on a panel.
00:13:05.360And there are many, many, many examples of that.
00:13:08.940But I think there's a serious point there, which is that you have to look at the type of people that Davos invites
00:13:15.500and the type of people that Davos accepts and the type of ideas that are entirely uncontroversial to utter in a room there
00:13:22.300that are so wildly disconnected from the world around you.
00:13:25.180Take, for example, this clip, which I shared,
00:13:27.700I believe it was in 2022, of J. Michael Evans,
00:13:31.980who is the president of Alibaba Group,
00:14:17.700It's going to be the most exciting launch since Barbie and Oppenheimer, an app that monitors what you eat, where you travel, what you buy and how you live.
00:14:26.360Now, of course, it's all voluntary. No one has to install the app.
00:14:29.400It's not like China would do a social credit thing to monitor your compliance with it.
00:14:34.320Or, oh, maybe it's going to be like those programs you install in your car to get cheaper insurance where the carrot is dangled in front of you that, oh, if you drive better, you get a cheaper rate.
00:16:38.540And by the way, I have to whip out the greatest hit here.
00:16:41.120you may wonder well what's this got to do with canada it's not like the wef has any control or
00:16:45.860influence over the canadian government right well let's ask mr schwab what we are very proud of now
00:16:52.060as a young generation like prime minister trudeau president of president of argentina and so on
00:17:00.620that we penetrate the cabinets so yesterday i was at a reception for prime minister trudeau
00:17:08.540And I would know that half of this cabinet or even more half of half of this cabinet are for our actually young global leaders of the world.
00:17:25.000We penetrate the cabinets. We penetrate the cabinets.
00:17:29.640I mean, that's the kind of word that you might think would attract some attention.
00:17:34.280I imagine if, for example, one of the Koch brothers or who else, who's like the evil, scary right winger, I don't know, Stephen Harper, he's the head of the IDU, which I know gets the left all riled up.
00:17:45.940What if Stephen Harper said, oh, yes, we, I mean, he would be not as exciting as penetrating cabinets.
00:17:50.580He'd be like, well, we penetrate the cabinets of governments around the world.
00:17:54.680And I look at the government here and I say, well, half of them are mine.
00:18:15.160He's trying to, you know, puff himself up and tout his own influence and make it seem like he's controlling the Canadian government.
00:18:21.140He doesn't actually control the Canadian government, to which I say, OK, but why are the Canadian ministers like Chrystia Freeland and François-Philippe Champagne and Justin Trudeau occasionally,
00:18:32.020why are they going along with it? Why are they feeding into this belief? Are they representing
00:18:38.100Canada when they go, or are they representing the WEF, or are Canada's interests and the WEF's
00:18:43.600interests just so inextricably linked now that there's no distinguishing between the two?
00:18:48.160Let's bring in Spencer Fernando here, a fantastic independent journalist, and apart from half the
00:18:53.720cabinet, not, as I understand it, an alumnus of Klaus Schwab's Young Global Leaders Program,
00:18:59.020although who knows apparently half the people uh in the country are here spencer it is wonderful to
00:19:03.340talk to you thanks for coming back on the show good to be here uh now how this all started of
00:19:07.580course is pierre polyev says what he's been talking about for quite a while here and then
00:19:12.300the canadian press just pounces on this and accuses him of embracing conspiracy theories for
00:19:19.100expressing a position that i think most canadians would probably find utterly unobjectionable right
00:19:23.820yeah and you know one point i make when i talk about uh the wef and how people respond to it
00:19:30.700is that uh there's a big nuance that's being missed obviously missed on purpose by the media
00:19:34.940which is there's really two kinds of critics of the left there are the the legit conspiracy
00:19:38.860theorists the ones who claim oh they you know they caused the pandemic obviously no evidence
00:19:43.260for that no one credible believes that who claim that there's some you know evil sinister
00:19:47.500organization you know controlling the whole world behind the scenes but then there's the
00:19:51.260very legitimate criticism, which is what Paulie was talking about, which is that if you look at
00:19:55.820what they talk about, it's this kind of policies that are hurting Canada right now, driving up the
00:19:59.740cost of energy, moving decision-making away from a lot of national governments and the electorates
00:20:06.380of countries having influence over their governments and bringing things up to a higher
00:20:10.700level that's more detached from the day-to-day lives of people. And that's obviously a negative
00:20:14.940thing. So of course, the media is not making that nuanced point. They're not talking about how
00:20:19.580others, different kinds of criticism, some that are legitimate, some that are not. They're just
00:20:24.120trying to lump it all in as a conspiracy theory and hoping that it'll just stop people from
00:20:27.600talking about it. Yeah. And it was a very similar dynamic to what we saw on a lot of the COVID
00:20:33.560discussions where, you know, there were people that absolutely had, you know, any number of
00:20:37.540conspiratorial beliefs. But then we also had this group in the middle that are saying, well, hang on,
00:20:41.300I, you know, I believe COVID is real, but I've got questions about how it originated, or I'm
00:20:45.420skeptical that we need a vaccine mandate or a vaccine passport to get through it. And then
00:20:49.540those people were accused of being conspiracy theorists. And it's become one of the most
00:20:53.860effective vehicles to really shut down criticism. If you can just really lump it all into one
00:21:00.800category and say, anyone raising any questions is a conspiracy theorist. Even if in the case of
00:21:05.640Polyev, the media failed to come up with a single example of anything he said that was conspiratorial.
00:21:10.680The accusation was really just, well, he says this stuff and other people have conspiracy theories about them.
00:21:17.900Yeah, I mean, all you have to do is just play like the clip you played there, which is what's actually funny about that is, you know, the Norwegian lady there was a lot more honest than most of our politicians.
00:21:28.180She was at least admitting that the policies she supports are going to cause real pain.
00:21:31.340Right. I mean, you don't you don't see that kind of honesty from the liberal government.
00:21:34.300I mean, on the one hand, they say, oh, we're very worried about the cost of living.
00:21:37.260oh here's a new carbon tax you know here are a bunch of policies that drive up the cost of energy
00:21:41.480so they they never even have the guts to admit what they're actually doing but yeah you know
00:21:45.980it's you know we've i think we've seen how this plays out you know in you know four or five months
00:21:51.880there'll be some mainstream media article saying well actually the web does have some problematic
00:21:55.860aspects to it you know here's why people are legitimately concerned it's almost like they
00:21:59.660want to be the ones to get there first to talk about something and if they don't then they just
00:22:03.240dismiss it until they start talking about it then it's legitimate as you say with covid
00:22:06.860you know you couldn't bring up the lab leak idea oh no that's that's totally that's that's insane
00:22:11.120only crazy people will believe that people got banned from social media for talking about it
00:22:15.720people got in serious trouble and then all of a sudden you know a year or two later you know
00:22:19.320new york times other you know credible publications you know as some people see them
00:22:23.640they start talking about it then okay now it's it's okay to talk about now it's okay
00:22:27.520and that's a big problem in a free society because the whole point is we're supposed to you know
00:22:31.500find out the truth through debating ideas openly and honestly and if we just you know shut people
00:22:36.120down for having opinions that are not, you know, that people think are too conspiratorial, then
00:22:41.380we're not going to get to the truth, right? Yeah, you're quite right about that. And I go back to,
00:22:46.660I don't know if you were on when I brought it up, this headline in CBC of taking aim at Davos when
00:22:52.160Trump was there. And they, you know, say Trump the populace descends on globalist Davos. So when
00:22:57.140Donald Trump was going there, it was all too easy for the left to criticize this and say, oh, yeah,
00:23:01.540it's these out-of-touch elites. And now that, you know, it's the right that has concerns with WEF,
00:23:06.360it seems to be conspiratorial in the same people's eyes. And I can actually fully admit that the left
00:23:11.960may have been much better at sussing out the problems with this organization many years ago,
00:23:17.980because it used to be. I mean, Chrystia Freeland, when she was a journalist, wrote the book on this
00:23:22.060organization and made a lot of very good points about it. Naomi Klein, who I don't agree with on
00:23:26.520very many things as well, was a very, very significant critic of this. And a lot of the
00:23:32.420left wing protests that there used to be there were kind of the very similar things that we see
00:23:38.780in like the Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump agreement on, you know, the problems of free trade and the
00:23:44.140problems of globalization and how it's really become a class struggle in a lot of ways. And
00:23:48.720I think that there's something perhaps that the right could have learned about that sooner. But
00:23:52.480it is interesting the way the media responds to these things, because when it was the left
00:23:56.840raising these criticisms, there was never that I recall any denunciation of them. They were never
00:24:01.680called conspiracy theorists. But now that the right is raising these concerns or more of the
00:24:06.780right raising these concerns, it's we have to denounce the denouncers. Yeah, I think a big
00:24:12.380thing, too, is that there's been, you know, a not so subtle shift in I don't know if you want to
00:24:18.300call political ideology or the way people talk about things. But, you know, what does it mean
00:24:21.540be conservative you know liberal left right there's a lot of overlap and a lot of i think
00:24:25.540confusion for people and so um you know it used to be very conservative to say well you know keep
00:24:30.740taxes low have free trade you know be very capitalist and you know support the free market
00:24:35.060i'd still define myself that way well whether that's still considered conservative or not
00:24:38.740you know you're seeing more of a shift towards you know state intervention cultural conservatism in
00:24:42.900some ways but i think the media instead of talking about the nuance which i guess goes over some of
00:24:47.540of their heads, they just, they look for the easiest, you know, thing they can say, which is,
00:24:51.020oh, fascism, conspiracy theorist, you know, anti-Semitic. I see some people trying to call
00:24:55.780Paulie an anti-Semitic, which is obviously absurd. And so it's just, a lot of it's just laziness.
00:25:00.680It's not wanting to delve deeper into the issue, not wanting to deal with any complexity or nuance.
00:25:05.020It's just, what's the quickest insult I could find to make the whole issue go away or just
00:25:08.280label someone badly and then people will stop talking about it. So I think that's part of what
00:25:11.740we're dealing with too, is just very lazy journalism in many cases.
00:25:15.660What's your thought on how Polyev has been relatively unrepentant?
00:25:19.100Because I know the last couple of conservative leaders, Aaron O'Toole and Andrew Scheer,
00:25:23.700were both fairly timid when it came to the media.
00:25:26.580And they both really buckled when the media was going after them.
00:25:30.500Whereas Polyev, to his credit, hasn't done that.
00:25:32.920And even on the WEF stuff, he came out after that CP article and just said,
00:25:59.380And, you know, the reason I think it's working, and this is, I think, a deeper point for why the liberals are struggling, is that things are just bad in the country.
00:26:06.260I mean, you know, we can talk about all the complexities of certain things.
00:26:09.020but in many cases, people are looking around and saying, well, the liberals have been in power for
00:26:13.040eight years and things are getting worse. Okay. This guy, Polyev, well, what's he talking about?
00:26:18.080Okay. You know, we need affordable housing. We need to deal with crime. We need to lower the
00:26:21.860cost of living, you know, pretty common sense things. People look at that and say, well,
00:26:25.200at least this guy's addressing the issues I have. And then they turn on the news and they say,
00:26:28.700oh, the liberals say Polyev is a dangerous, scary conspiracy theorist. And I think people are just
00:26:33.140going to start to tune that out. I mean, they've heard it so often. It really doesn't match up
00:26:36.900with reality. And so I think, you know, I don't, I don't, I'm not shocked that liberals are trying
00:26:41.700this. I mean, they've got to try something, right? In politics, ether, whatever attack you think is
00:26:44.960going to work, but they don't really have much left in terms of saying, oh, look, look how great
00:26:48.960we're doing. Look how great things are for you. Look how affordable everything is. And so the,
00:26:53.840the other issue too, as much of the establishment media, you know, if you look at Bill C-18 and how
00:26:57.820they're all lining up behind that, despite it being an absolute disaster, they're really just
00:27:02.220desperate for money. And they know a conservative government is not going to give them a bunch of
00:27:05.640money is not going to restrict social media companies and restrict free speech for their
00:27:09.800benefit. And so they now have a vested financial interest in trying to keep the Liberals in power.
00:27:14.220So I think it's important to filter our perception of their coverage through that lens as well,
00:27:19.580which is that, look, they want the Liberals to stay in power because they want the Liberals
00:27:22.540to give them taxpayer dollars and restrict independent competitors. So that's going to
00:27:27.040certainly shade their coverage. Yeah. And to be honest, when you talk about how terrible things
00:28:00.160So, I mean, even if you don't believe that they're influential, the question is, all right, what are you providing? What service are you providing to world leaders that go there when you failed at the most basic things? And I don't know if there's an answer for that. And, you know, to Canadian leaders, I'd say, where's the value proposition? What are you getting for Canadians when you hang out with these billionaires? Because I've yet to see that.
00:28:22.620Yeah, I think a big part of it is just, you know, it's like a club for people, you know, you hear all the celebrities are going there, you know, politicians are going there, you know, people want to get involved and, you know, be seen there.
00:28:34.020And, you know, I guess it's some sort of credibility boost in some cases. But I think, you know, a big part of all this is that there's a lot of people who have, you know, they're, it's a good way to put it. They're almost their purpose for living in many ways is all about being involved in some sort of, you know, world historical battle or, you know, being a historical figure.
00:28:53.820I think Stephen Gilbeau is a good example of that. He obviously sees himself as some sort of heroic figure who, oh, it doesn't matter how many people he hurts economically. It's all for the greater good, as he mentioned earlier, the so-called greater good that a lot of politicians use to do things that aren't really good ideas.
00:29:10.440and so he's obviously sure that he's the good guy he doesn't question himself at all you know he just
00:29:15.240gets more and more aggressive you know more restrictions on energy more bans on plastic and
00:29:19.900everything you know make make people's life more difficult for the greater good to save the planet
00:29:23.640and so you know davos i think gives people a chance to congregate and feel like they're being
00:29:28.460part of something right oh they're part of you know reshaping the world and saving the planet
00:29:31.860and so you know when they're told well actually you know nothing you do is working it's only
00:29:36.440making things worse and people don't really like you and don't want to hear this kind of stuff
00:29:40.640they're not just going to give in, right, because their whole purpose is built up in that.
00:29:44.840And so I think that's something we need to look at for the types of people we elect
00:29:49.920and types of people we trust in the position of power is you don't really want people
00:29:54.660who think that they're saving the planet or that they're some big historical figure.
00:29:58.380You want someone who wants to manage the government well, keep taxes low,
00:30:02.480have services be relatively effective.
00:30:04.540You don't want people who have some sort of massive mission in mind.
00:30:07.380And so I think that's part of what the whole Davos thing is.
00:30:10.440I mean, obviously, Klaus Schwab, I think he does sometimes talk up his own influence
00:30:14.860because that's where his sense of purpose comes from.
00:30:17.320He's orchestrating everything around the world.
00:30:19.260I'm sure it makes him feel good to see people say that about him.
00:30:22.020But if the West was really running everything, I think they'd be a little more careful and subtle about it.
00:30:26.440I mean, would you pick Klaus Schwab who basically seems like a villain ripped out of a James Bond movie?
00:30:31.240Would he really be the front man for it?
00:30:32.800I mean, a little too on the nose sometimes, I think.
00:30:34.820Well, yeah, yeah, you're, you're right about that. And that's the problem. I mean, it's like,
00:30:38.020even if the WEF is not the shadowy global cabal of people running the world, man, do they not do
00:30:44.440much to dissuade people from taking that image? It's like right out of central casting and like,
00:30:49.060you know, it's a future list built by us. It's like, yeah, okay, fine, fine. Uh, Spencer Fernando,
00:30:53.320independent journalist, extraordinary. You can get his work at spencerfernando.com.
00:30:57.980Always good to talk to you, Spencer. Thanks for coming on.
00:31:01.200All right. Thank you very much for that. And by the way, let me just point out here that when you go there, it's a very weird place. And I've been to two now covering it for True North, and I've been very grateful that there's been so much support for our coverage of this.
00:31:17.760but it's just an odd place because on one hand, it like has all the trappings of a regular
00:31:22.120conference. You go and you're like, oh yeah, you run into this person and that person. And oh,
00:31:26.980you're beside, you know, so-and-so at the urinal in the bathroom, but it just happens to be the
00:31:31.300king of the Belgians or something. And you're like, well, that's weird. You know, the last
00:31:33.960conference I was at, it was, you know, I don't know, some, you know, county warden that I was
00:31:38.320at the urinal beside now it's the king of the Belgians. So it's, it's odd. And then you, you
00:31:42.160go and they, all of these like swag bags, you know, except I was walking down the street once
00:31:46.160and it was really, really cold. The snow was coming down and the United Arab Emirates was
00:31:50.260handing out mittens and toques to people with these little United Arab Emirates bags. And I'm
00:31:54.220like, well, on one hand, do I want free swag from the United Arab Emirates? No. But on the other
00:31:58.300hand, am I very, very cold right now? And could I benefit from United Arab Emirates swag? So I think
00:32:03.920you know the answer to this question that I have a United Arab Emirates toque and gloves. Actually,
00:32:08.820no, I think they were out of the gloves. I think I might've only gotten the toque. I think Sean
00:32:12.140might have. Sean, do you remember, did we get the toques and the gloves or just the, just one or
00:32:16.920the other? He got gloves. Maybe I got the toque and he got the gloves. And that was the, that was
00:32:20.940the trade-off there. And then the hot chocolate. I did like the hot chocolate video last time of
00:32:24.560like, you know, Facebook's hot chocolate and the Swiss government's hot chocolate and Zurich's
00:32:28.460hot chocolate. But you, you can't let yourself get sucked in by that. This is an organization
00:32:33.000that for all the oddities of it has a very serious and very radical policy agenda. And I think that's
00:32:38.640why. I mean, it's fun to look at sort of the oddities of it, but you also have to talk about
00:32:42.420the seriousness of it and talk about the meat of it. All of this discussion about the World Economic
00:32:48.760Forum leads me to this here that I wanted to tell you in that True North is going back. We are
00:32:55.080returning to the World Economic Forum annual meeting 2024, which is coming up in January,
00:33:00.880and we are going to be covering it with the biggest team we've ever sent there. We are going to have
00:33:05.720more people on the ground, and we are going to be talking to the movers and shakers, talking to the
00:33:10.540global elites, whether they want to hear from us or not, and really putting the questions to them
00:33:15.280that we've been talking about on this show, questions that Pierre Polyev and Danielle
00:33:19.040Smith have raised, and questions that the media in this country generally, certainly the legacy
00:33:23.740media, refuse to raise. And one thing I will point out about this is that it is incredibly difficult
00:33:30.120to get there. The World Economic Forum seizes all of the hotels in the area, basically, before they
00:33:37.500even announce the dates, which means that the second the dates are announced, every hotel is
00:33:42.540sold out. So you're left with Airbnbs. Many of those are booked out to the same people who go
00:33:47.300back year after year. We found an Airbnb, a town over last time we were there. This time we could
00:33:53.800not get it. And we ended up having to find accommodations very far outside of Davos. We're
00:33:59.000still looking because we want to be able to get closer but we had to find accommodations in another
00:34:03.980literally in another country in Austria on the other side of the border and we are going to
00:34:09.520commute day in day out unless we can find something closer and even then we have to spend a fair bit
00:34:14.720of money to do it so the reason I tell this to you now is so that if you are interested in this
00:34:19.620and you do think there's value to this that we need to explain why it's not a conspiracy theory
00:34:24.440to report on the World Economic Forum,
00:34:26.700to report on the Canadian government's links