Juno News - January 24, 2023


The WEF agenda is alive and well in Canada


Episode Stats


Length

42 minutes

Words per minute

184.14902

Word count

7,879

Sentence count

368

Harmful content

Misogyny

5

sentences flagged

Toxicity

4

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

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

In this episode, Andrew Lawton talks about his experience at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and why he thinks Canada should have a seat at the table at Davos. He also talks about why the Davos agenda is alive and well in Canada.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.
00:00:05.720 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.
00:00:12.840 Hello and welcome to you all.
00:00:15.640 This is another edition of Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show,
00:00:19.000 the Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.
00:00:21.240 On this Tuesday, January 24th, 2022, just after 4.30 Eastern Time,
00:00:28.600 I'm doing the show at a bit of an odd hour today.
00:00:31.140 I don't even know.
00:00:31.760 There's not even a good reason.
00:00:32.880 I started down the road of telling you why it was at an odd hour before I realized that
00:00:36.680 I think my producer just asked me what time we were going live, and I blurted out 4.30.
00:00:41.600 It's probably just about 10.30 p.m. or so on my internal clock.
00:00:46.840 I just got back on the weekend from Switzerland.
00:00:50.400 I wasn't on a skiing trip in the Swiss Alps, although I was in the Swiss Alps,
00:00:55.300 for the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos.
00:00:59.360 The 2023 annual meeting were thousands of the world's elites,
00:01:03.860 business leaders, media leaders, academics, intellectuals,
00:01:07.300 the intelligentsia, and of course, big bucks CEOs,
00:01:11.340 all just hobnobbing with each other over some various varieties of juice.
00:01:15.900 I can't remember if I shared the picture in a previous show,
00:01:19.600 but when I went inside the Congress Center in Davos,
00:01:23.020 There's this little coffee refreshment area in the foyer just outside of the room where all the sessions take place.
00:01:31.240 And they had coffee and tea, of course.
00:01:33.320 And they also had a sign advertising the health bar.
00:01:36.240 And you walked up to it and there were these very bright colored, vibrant juices.
00:01:40.820 And you say, oh, well, that looks good.
00:01:42.200 And one of them was turnip cabbage.
00:01:44.380 Another was pumpkin, spelled the less known P-U-M-K-I-N. 1.00
00:01:51.060 They're Swiss. 1.00
00:01:51.620 I won't hold the lack of spelling the word pumpkin against them too, too much.
00:01:56.160 And then beetroot juice.
00:01:57.780 And I was just about to have myself a beetroot juice when the president of Serbia walked by.
00:02:03.740 And I figured, okay, the beetroot juice can wait.
00:02:05.380 I got to talk to the president of Serbia first, President Vucic.
00:02:09.840 Vucic, I apologize.
00:02:11.060 My Serbian is somewhat lacking.
00:02:13.360 Thankfully, his English was better than my Serbian.
00:02:15.600 So our very brief interview was able to proceed in English.
00:02:19.340 We're going to talk about the President of Serbia, the Prime Minister of Kurdistan.
00:02:23.700 We'll talk about the President of the Bank of Montreal, the Commander of Rebel News,
00:02:27.660 the Deputy Prime Minister of Canada, and lots of other folks that I encountered in Davos in the next little while.
00:02:34.800 But I wanted to do a bit of a post-mortem, if you will.
00:02:38.120 I did a couple of these live shows last week in Davos.
00:02:41.960 We spoke from our Airbnb about all sorts of things that were happening.
00:02:46.540 Now that it's in the rearview mirror, I want to talk about it from a bit of a bigger picture
00:02:51.340 perspective and why, as the title of the show indicates, I think Canadians need to realize
00:02:56.440 that the World Economic Forum agenda is alive and well in Canada.
00:03:01.440 Now, let me just first offset the stage here by talking about what it is that the WEF agenda
00:03:08.020 actually is.
00:03:09.380 and I wasn't going to use the clip in the show today although if my very patient and adaptive
00:03:16.380 producer Sean can get it for us I will share it because it was actually on the first day that I
00:03:22.360 ran into Klaus Schwab and he was talking to a reporter after a press conference. I walked up
00:03:28.160 to him and he was explaining how he basically doesn't have an agenda of his own. He was basically
00:03:35.120 trying to make the claim that he is just a mere facilitator. He just has a table and all of these
00:03:41.180 world leaders and business CEOs sit at the table and he's not the guy that tells anyone what to do.
00:03:46.820 And this was something that I thought deserved to be pushed back against. I think it was something
00:03:51.380 that required a little bit of pushback because the WEF gets to kind of hide behind this idea of
00:03:57.740 we're just a platform. We're just a facilitator more often than I think it should be allowed to.
00:04:05.120 And a big part of this is because the media generally does not hold them account.
00:04:09.580 And this was a prevailing theme of my time in Davos.
00:04:12.880 You've got no shortage of journalists there.
00:04:14.500 You've got journalists from Latin America.
00:04:16.400 You've got journalists from all over Europe.
00:04:18.020 You've got Asian journalists.
00:04:19.460 You've certainly got a lot of American journalists, but none of them are actually there to ask
00:04:23.740 any real questions, either of the World Economic Forum or of the participants in Davos.
00:04:30.340 So when I heard Klaus Schwab saying this, I didn't really buy it.
00:04:38.060 I'm very often expressing myself, except now I have to explain why we have chosen to see,
00:04:45.240 but you never have heard from me political statements or economic statements,
00:04:49.960 which are, let's say, in any way influencing.
00:05:00.340 hmm, doesn't make any statements which are influencing political figures and politicians.
00:05:07.200 Well, that's a very, very odd thing to say.
00:05:11.240 So when Klaus Schwab makes comments about penetrating the cabinets,
00:05:16.020 and when he makes comments about all the young global leaders,
00:05:19.080 and when he makes comments about how the future does not just happen,
00:05:21.920 we build the future, the people in this room, he's not influencing anyone.
00:05:26.040 He's just, he's the empresario of the globalists.
00:05:30.120 That's Klaus Schwab's whole MO.
00:05:31.740 He's the globalist empresario.
00:05:33.960 He's just basically the ringleader.
00:05:35.740 And all of the animals are going to do what they're going to do in the circus without him telling them.
00:05:40.160 And why this is so unconvincing is because when you go to the World Economic Forum event, as I did, I've done twice, one with accreditation, you get all of these press releases that come out.
00:05:52.440 There's all of these initiatives that are being announced.
00:05:54.840 There's this task force.
00:05:56.080 There's this thing.
00:05:56.780 And you can't buy into the fact that this is a neutral organization without an agenda that also manages to be launching these commissions.
00:06:06.400 I mean, for example, Mary Ng, and we reported about this on TNC.news over at True North.
00:06:12.700 Mary Ng was having an informal ministerial meeting at the World Economic Forum and somehow comes out at this event that was not a multilateral summit by any stretch.
00:06:24.160 It wasn't a climate conference, but she comes out as part of a coalition of trade ministers on climate, which was launched in Davos, presided over by the World Economic Forum.
00:06:34.780 And this strikes me as the kind of thing that only happens when there's an organization that has a very specific agenda that it's putting forward.
00:06:42.860 And you can look at the guest list and see, well, there are lots of CEOs of oil companies there, tech resources in Canada.
00:06:48.760 you may recall the Tech Frontier Pipeline project that used to be all the rage before they had to
00:06:54.200 pull the plug, the tech executives were there. And that strikes me as a bit odd, right? It should
00:07:00.120 strike you as a bit odd, but they do this because they have to have this cursory participation from
00:07:05.340 the oil and gas sector so that when people like me get up there and say, well, you have an aggressively
00:07:10.060 anti-oil agenda, they can say, well, no, we had tech resources there. Yeah, we had the president
00:07:17.040 of SEPSA, the Spanish company. I talked about this one last week on the show. This is the
00:07:22.540 Spanish oil and gas company whose CEO got up there and talked about how we need to accelerate the
00:07:28.420 transition away from oil and gas and use green technologies. Now, oddly, after that discussion,
00:07:35.480 I woke up one morning. I think it was like Saturday morning or something. I was back in Canada.
00:07:40.120 I woke up and saw that that company had followed me on Twitter. This company that I've never
00:07:44.820 mentioned on Twitter, that I've never followed, that I've never had any dealing with whatsoever
00:07:48.640 after I do a discussion about them on my show, somehow are following me on Twitter. So we'll
00:07:54.060 call that the World Economic Forum effect for you. But the reason this is so relevant is because
00:08:00.060 there was an aggressively anti-oil and gas agenda taking place in Davos. And even the oil companies
00:08:06.720 and mining companies who had representatives there were companies that are making a lot of money by
00:08:12.560 participating in this transition themselves, they're not representative of groups in Canada,
00:08:17.720 for example, that are still very reliant on clean and efficient and environmentally sound
00:08:23.140 extraction of natural resources. And the one thing I do say, though, and I think it's important for
00:08:30.780 people to realize, is that not every single participant of the WEF meeting is part of this
00:08:38.020 monolithic group. I think there's this tendency to assume that everyone there thinks the same way,
00:08:44.380 when in actual fact, there are people that represent a range of ideas. Certainly, I think
00:08:49.840 a certain type of people tend to be the ones invited, and they all tend to be consumed by
00:08:55.840 what's happening there and talk about things the same way. But there were some individual people
00:09:01.460 that did a very good job at pushing back against this prevailing narrative, one of whom
00:09:06.620 we mentioned on the show previously and shared a bit of my interview with that was Niall Ferguson
00:09:11.240 the eminent historian and author another was the foreign minister of Hungary who talked about all
00:09:17.060 of the green energy woes another was Senator Joe Manchin who again is a Democrat from West Virginia
00:09:23.420 but on energy issues he's a lot more aligned with I think where ordinary people are and where
00:09:28.640 Republicans and conservatives are and he actually toured the oil sands in Alberta a few months back
00:09:34.520 when Jason Kenney was the premier. So it was a bit of a refreshing turn to have this chat with
00:09:40.320 Joe Manchin on the sidelines of the WEF annual meeting. Do you think it's fair? So first off,
00:09:49.700 what do you think of the Biden administration's decision to be so averse to importing Canadian
00:09:55.140 oil? It makes no sense to me whatsoever. You know, Canada has been our best trading partner.
00:10:00.940 It's been our best ally, and it's our friend and our neighbor.
00:10:03.900 And next of all, 62% of our heavy crude comes from Alberta.
00:10:07.580 So I'm totally committed to it, and they're totally wrong in not accepting it
00:10:11.680 and willing to go to different places and lift the sanctions off of Iran,
00:10:15.240 who wants the most prolific terrorist supporters and give them money,
00:10:18.900 or going towards areas that basically do not have the climate standards that Alberta has
00:10:24.020 and the way they've done it and done it so well and made so many different advancements.
00:10:27.740 So I'm totally supportive of Alberta oil coming more and more to the U.S.,
00:10:32.080 and it was a shame that we didn't ask them to support more.
00:10:34.840 Right now with the Russia-Ukraine war, we're obviously seeing a lot of discussion about energy independence and energy security.
00:10:40.840 Do you think this could cause some of those more resistance to Western oil in the United States to reevaluate?
00:10:47.260 Well, the bottom line is that the IRA bill, which everybody's talking about here,
00:10:50.960 it's a tremendous opportunity for the United States to be totally energy independent.
00:10:54.040 We can't do that unless we're basically developing an all-in energy policy using all of the resources that we have,
00:11:00.020 which is oil, gas, coal, and developing all the new technology for the future.
00:11:04.460 And that's what we're working on. That's what that bill is about.
00:11:06.380 It's about energy security and basically producing cleaner than any other hydrocarbons in the world.
00:11:11.980 So with that, basically, we're going to have to have Alberta oil.
00:11:15.680 There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it.
00:11:19.400 That was Senator Joe Manchin.
00:11:21.920 and what was interesting he he did a panel on the u.a i think it was called america unbound or
00:11:28.280 something and i just caught him on the way into that and then he said i forget what it is now but
00:11:31.620 he said something that uh was i think very problematic to a lot of people something along
00:11:37.380 the lines of internet free speech and i can't remember the exact wording but he made a comment
00:11:41.880 about how uh he felt that social media discourse was a problem and then he ended up walking that
00:11:46.620 back so it was unfortunate because i like had this great interview with joe manchin that i was
00:11:51.180 putting out. And then he had also stepped in it royally like 20 minutes later and was getting hit
00:11:56.780 by the same people that I was trying to get to watch this interview. So again, I remind people,
00:12:01.380 yes, he's a Democrat. I don't endorse him. I'm just saying that on energy, he seems to know
00:12:06.340 what's what and has a solid head on his shoulders. I hold, I reserve judgment on other issues and
00:12:12.640 deal with that as it comes up. But I think it was important. And let me just say on an aside here
00:12:18.700 that when politicians go to Davos,
00:12:22.240 now this is like the death knell
00:12:24.620 for credibility in certain circles.
00:12:26.720 I know this is like the big litmus test now
00:12:28.700 for a lot of people.
00:12:29.800 And again, going to Davos often means a certain thing,
00:12:32.520 like Chrystia Freeland goes there
00:12:33.940 and there's been no record put out
00:12:36.380 of what meeting she had.
00:12:37.680 There's been no list of announcements.
00:12:39.420 There was no proclamation.
00:12:40.860 Who did she meet with?
00:12:41.700 Did she have bilateral meetings, multilateral meetings?
00:12:44.400 Is she also joining Canada up in some task force 0.78
00:12:47.500 like Mary Ng, who knows? And I think this is the important distinction here is that going to Davos
00:12:54.160 itself is not inherently wrong. If you're going for the right reasons, you're saying the right
00:12:59.700 things on stage publicly, and they align with what you're saying privately. And I would argue
00:13:05.000 if there's transparency, if you're prepared to own up to what it is you're doing there and what it is
00:13:10.080 you're hoping to achieve. Like Maxime Bernier has been to Davos, Stephen Harper has been to Davos,
00:13:15.180 And both of those people, I think, would articulate, and Maxime has done a video on this or an interview on this in the past, what it is they were doing there and why they were there.
00:13:24.900 But the organization has changed a fair bit in the last 10 years, certainly in the last five years.
00:13:31.180 And from my perspective, I'd say the COVID era was the real point at which it became too important to look away.
00:13:38.480 because that was when they started talking about these really grandiose plans
00:13:42.900 in a way that started permeating through a lot of places
00:13:46.120 that hadn't really paid all that much attention to it.
00:13:48.980 And we started to see things like the Great Reset, Build Back Better,
00:13:52.920 and what are some of the other buzzwords that they use?
00:13:55.460 Stakeholder capitalism.
00:13:57.560 And all of this is part and parcel of a bigger plan here
00:14:00.920 that is incredibly relevant, not just to Canadians,
00:14:04.260 but to other people as well.
00:14:06.240 and it's challenging when you talk about this group that goes there that is so unused to scrutiny
00:14:13.860 so unused to being asked questions and normally in other places are not taking questions and
00:14:19.820 this is why i talk about this and i know i shared it in the previous episode of this show but i
00:14:24.980 think it bears repeating because it's very short and it's very telling christia freeland the deputy
00:14:29.620 prime minister of canada a member of the wef board of trustees we wouldn't accept her being
00:14:35.640 on a corporate board. We wouldn't accept her being a lobbyist. Why should she have this role
00:14:41.020 with the WEF? And how does it not put her in a conflict of interest with her role as a Canadian
00:14:46.440 cabinet minister? This is a very legitimate question. And if she had thought about it for
00:14:51.580 more than five seconds, you'd think she probably could have come up with an answer to it. But this
00:14:56.040 is what happens when Deputy Prime Minister Freeland is asked the question.
00:15:05.640 After that, I had some people asking me,
00:15:23.880 why were you so nice to her? Why did you tell her to have a nice panel? I said, well, 0.69
00:15:27.800 because I'm not trying to be unreasonable here. I don't want anyone to be able to look at my
00:15:32.040 interactions with these people and say that I went in hot and I was aggressive and that's why
00:15:36.620 they didn't want to talk to me. But it was polite. I was firm. And she could have taken the 15 seconds
00:15:42.840 to stop and say, there's no issue and here's why. The woman who once co-hosted a global conference 1.00
00:15:50.680 for media freedom at which she wanted to pick and choose which journalist could ask her questions
00:15:55.160 doesn't like journalists asking her questions in Davos. Now, another person who normally was not
00:16:01.080 taking our questions but in Davos did stop and talk was the president of BMO formerly the Bank
00:16:07.100 of Montreal Daryl White who according to Minister Freeland wanted the truckers classified as
00:16:14.080 terrorists when it came to Canada's terrorism and anti-money laundering laws and this was the
00:16:20.920 guy who again according to Minister Freeland's handwritten note said that Canada was looking
00:16:25.280 like a banana republic people didn't want to invest here treat them like terrorists when this
00:16:30.900 came out a few months ago through the Public Order Emergency Commission. I tried to get an
00:16:35.900 answer from BMO on whether this was an accurate representation of his comments and if so what he
00:16:41.520 was thinking when he said those. Now on the streets of Davos he had a bit of a different story. Take a
00:16:47.040 look. Minister Freeland said during the Public Order Emergency Commission that you had wanted
00:16:54.300 to call the convoy protesters terrorists
00:16:56.440 to deal with their financing.
00:16:58.180 Why was that?
00:17:00.260 So I would never call the convoy protesters terrorists.
00:17:05.400 What was said was that
00:17:07.980 in order for the banks to be helpful,
00:17:12.900 there are certain protocols,
00:17:14.860 and those protocols include a sanction
00:17:18.180 where we can, in fact, help in that case.
00:17:21.980 Otherwise, it's not our business to interfere in the affairs of anyone's finances, truckers or otherwise.
00:17:28.200 One of the other banking executives on that call had pushed back a little bit
00:17:31.680 and said that they didn't want the banks to be weaponized.
00:17:34.100 Was that a view you shared?
00:17:35.560 Oh, it's always a view I shared.
00:17:36.740 I don't think banks should be weaponized any more than any other industry.
00:17:40.540 I think we have jobs to do, and we do it for Canadians,
00:17:43.420 and I think generally, in fact more than generally, we do it pretty well.
00:17:46.620 Did you support the financial measures?
00:17:51.660 that last one you got when they're walking away you got to always sneak in a last one there and
00:17:57.700 again i thought that was also a legitimate question okay if you're just talking about
00:18:01.680 supporting the government on the directions that they took did you support those measures
00:18:06.480 and he was silent which again i feel is pretty much an answer now interestingly enough he was
00:18:12.820 on my flight on the way back to toronto as was who else was on my flight christia freeland was
00:18:18.660 on my flight she also did not want to chat even when I wasn't recording when I just said hello 0.96
00:18:23.980 and I said good to see you again minister and she quickly looked the other way and bolted into the
00:18:28.600 business class cabin not like me closer to the back of the plane and what else happened here
00:18:34.060 who Daryl White was on the former premier of Newfoundland was on my flight Brian Tobin and the
00:18:39.680 former front man of Great Big Sea Alan Doyle was also on my flight now Alan I don't know if Alan
00:18:46.180 Doyle was at Davos. I don't know how being a Newfoundland singer gets you an invitation to
00:18:51.980 Davos or if he was just passing through Zurich, but he was up there palling and around palling
00:18:56.940 around with former Premier Tobin and also with Daryl White of BMO, oddly. I saw the two of them
00:19:02.020 like hugging at Pearson Airport after as they went their separate ways. So Davos makes for
00:19:07.560 strange bedfellows, as they say. But there were some interesting people, again, that are not used
00:19:14.120 to taking questions. One of them, and I hope you'll indulge me here because this is more of a
00:19:19.000 British story, but it's one that is tremendously relevant to Canada when we talk about the internet
00:19:24.680 regulations that are coming in. And just by way of context here, Ofcom is Britain's CRTC. So it's
00:19:32.020 the regulator of television and radio stations. Ofcom has more of a content oversight role than
00:19:39.380 the CRTC does. Ofcom says what you can and can't say at a certain time of day. Ofcom says what
00:19:45.200 you're allowed to say as far as profanity is concerned. And if you look at the list of what
00:19:49.840 words they govern, it's actually quite hilarious. And Ofcom also has been investigating various
00:19:56.920 networks, notably GB News and the former program on there, The Mark Stein Show, for having discussions
00:20:03.540 about vaccine harms about vaccine injuries and there have been a slate of investigations against
00:20:09.880 this some of which Ofcom has dismissed others Ofcom has decided to advance which could bring
00:20:15.100 in basically sanctions leading up to the termination of a station's broadcast license now
00:20:21.360 all the while Ofcom likes to say well we support free speech we support vigorous debate we're not
00:20:27.000 a censor yet somehow the chief broadcasting oversight woman the chief censor of the United
00:20:32.480 United Kingdom Dame Melanie Dawes was at Davos. Now again I've asked Ofcom because I've done some
00:20:39.440 work with GB News and with Mark Stein and I've asked Ofcom in the past to comment on this very
00:20:44.920 thing and they've not responded but it's a lot harder to hide on the streets of Davos. Here's Dame
00:20:51.000 Melanie Dawes. I was just wondering if I could ask you about whether you think Ofcom is being
00:20:58.840 fair in enforcing its COVID misinformation policy against very legitimate discourse about COVID?
00:21:04.880 Well, I'm not quite sure what you mean, to be honest.
00:21:07.400 Well, people that have spoken about vaccine injuries have received Ofcom complaints and
00:21:11.500 investigations and broadcast licenses are in jeopardy of people that talk about very real
00:21:15.680 issues. I just don't think that we've, I guess I'm not sure, it's very hard to answer that
00:21:22.080 question without a specific instance. GB News is facing investigations.
00:21:25.620 Well, there are sometimes cases where we open up an investigation, but, you know, let's see how that goes.
00:21:31.000 What we're absolutely clear about is that freedom of expression is incredibly important in the way that we deal with the broadcasting code.
00:21:37.940 So people are absolutely entitled to express views.
00:21:40.740 So we always abide by those principles whenever we're looking into anything.
00:21:44.660 So do you believe that discussing vaccine injury should be allowed?
00:21:47.800 Certainly, absolutely. Free and frank and open conversations are always good on any topic.
00:21:52.400 now mark stein put that clip up on his website i think it was yesterday or two days ago i would
00:21:59.920 argue that uh they could probably just drop their investigations here and now the chief executive
00:22:04.880 of ofcom says no we support free speech so that's not uh there's no point and i don't know the cases
00:22:10.160 you're talking about and you put those to her and she says well yes this is an example of the free
00:22:15.520 speech and vigorous debate that we allow so uh feel free to enter that into evidence if you're
00:22:20.240 going up against Ofcom in the U.S.
00:22:23.100 But it's important to, I would also say here,
00:22:26.280 and I know I'm making a lot of claims
00:22:27.960 that are important here,
00:22:28.820 but I think this whole story is one that is significant
00:22:31.920 and one that flies very often under the radar of media,
00:22:35.720 certainly under the radar of Canadian media.
00:22:39.320 But the big question,
00:22:40.260 and I had a few people point this out on Twitter
00:22:41.880 and wonder why I didn't ask it,
00:22:43.500 because you only get a few moments with these people.
00:22:45.620 if that, what is she doing in Davos in the first place? And that is a very fair question. Why is
00:22:52.780 the head of Ofcom there? Why is the head broadcast regulator of the United Kingdom cavorting with
00:22:58.480 globalists? If the head of CBC were there, people in Canada would probably have some issues with it.
00:23:03.280 If the head of the CRTC were there, people in Canada would have some issues with it. So these
00:23:08.080 are fairly legitimate questions and oftentimes they are just not used to having critical reporters
00:23:14.300 there. So the point that I made, and you can read if you want to get my thoughts on this in a bit
00:23:19.260 more depth, I wrote a sub stack about this the other day in which I talked about independent
00:23:23.380 media as being the real winners of the World Economic Forum annual meeting this year. And I
00:23:29.800 believe that because we were out in full force. There were independent journalists from the US,
00:23:34.740 from Australia, from Japan, from Canada. And in doing so, we really did shape the narrative in
00:23:42.100 a way we counter narrated in a way that a lot of these other people have never had happened before
00:23:48.460 like Russell Brand I was on his show once on Monday and once on Thursday last week so twice
00:23:54.680 last week and the amount of comments I've had from people emails new Twitter followers people in my
00:24:01.000 own life that don't follow politics that saw me on Russell Brand show and like reached out to me
00:24:05.540 or whatever this is significant because this is the sort of stuff that's breaking through
00:24:09.940 the traditional bubbles and conventional bubbles on these sorts of things so I decided to spend a
00:24:16.600 little bit of time talking with my Canadian compatriot and the rebel commander Ezra Levant
00:24:21.880 who was not just in Davos himself but led a team of rebels there for the second time in a row this
00:24:27.360 was our chat about independent media and the broader Davos narrative
00:24:31.980 I'm here with the rebel commander himself Ezra Levant just outside the security gates
00:24:39.920 It's here for the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2023 in Davos.
00:24:43.760 We may have to abruptly cut short this interview.
00:24:46.180 We've got our eye on all of the world leaders and business leaders that are coming by.
00:24:49.820 And if we see someone more interesting to talk to than each other,
00:24:52.100 Ezra and I will both bolt over there.
00:24:54.040 But Ezra, you've actually led a legion of rebels here this year.
00:24:58.280 I know it's the second year you've done this, the first time you've been here with them.
00:25:01.260 Why are you here?
00:25:02.720 Well, the World Economic Forum is something that if you were to get your news only from the CBC
00:25:09.100 and the Globe and Mail, it would either not exist at all or be the most beneficent, angelic
00:25:15.660 organization in the world. And if you were to criticize the World Economic Forum, you would
00:25:20.260 be denounced as a conspiracy theorist. But alas, there are some conspiracies afoot. There are some
00:25:27.020 conspiracies. Many of them are out in the open. That's what's interesting about the World Economic
00:25:30.580 Forum. To quote Klaus Schwab, their president for life, they seek to master the future.
00:25:38.220 They boast about penetrating the cabinets of countries around the world.
00:25:43.640 Klaus Schraub really did write a best-selling book called The Great Reset.
00:25:48.400 His intellectual muse Yuval Noah Harari really does talk about a future where people are useless
00:25:54.860 and for the mass of the public, their future is video games and drugs.
00:26:00.660 These are absurd things. 0.65
00:26:02.840 And normally if they were said by some madman, they would be dismissed, 0.99
00:26:06.960 except for the madman in question, who is actually the son of a literal Nazi. 0.87
00:26:11.660 Klaus Schwab's dad moved to Germany to work under the Nazis.
00:26:15.900 Like, it's almost too much of a Bond villain.
00:26:18.500 Like, if you were to draft a script with the World Economic Forum
00:26:22.040 and a leader, Klaus Schwab, talking about penetrating the cabinets,
00:26:25.700 Hollywood executives would say, it's unbelievable.
00:26:28.420 That's too on the nose.
00:26:30.120 But this group is real. He is a Bond villain.
00:26:32.580 And the thing is, he's got George Soros and his son Alex Soros.
00:26:37.280 He's got Bill Gates.
00:26:38.940 He's got Al Gore on the board.
00:26:40.540 He's got Larry Fink of BlackRock on the board.
00:26:42.580 He's got the head of Nestle, the head of Carlyle.
00:26:45.500 He's got companies on his board with trillions of dollars in holdings and assets under management.
00:26:52.780 So when he says he's going to change world policy about energy or change world policy about food,
00:27:00.740 get off of oil and gas, get off of meat, get onto bugs, that China is the future and America is the
00:27:07.000 sunset. He's not just a madman. He's a madman with enormous influence. Andrew, I think that 0.97
00:27:15.600 Klaus Schwab, because he's been in that position for decades, probably has more influence than any
00:27:22.980 other person in the world. The American president has more power. The head of the United Nations
00:27:28.260 probably knows more heads of state but he'll be replaced in a few years and the president will die
00:27:33.100 or be unelected and both of those people come here they come to klaus schwab's table and and he knows
00:27:40.140 every oligarch he knows every world leader he knows the money people and he has spent 40 years
00:27:46.860 building a legion of what he calls young leaders jacinda ardern look at her the pm of new zealand
00:27:52.840 emmanuel macron look at him the president of france justin trudeau and christia freeland
00:27:57.440 so it's such an extraordinarily powerful group of people who seek to rule the world that's what
00:28:04.700 they say they want to do surely they deserve some scrutiny and accountability but if you do that
00:28:10.380 the regime media kicks into into place and said you're a conspiracy theorist that needs a fact
00:28:16.580 check well we're here to fact check it just briefly on the media side one thing that's noteworthy
00:28:21.180 when you look around here is that there are a lot of media companies here from all around the world
00:28:25.540 But it's the companies that are here pouring a lot of money, not into sending teams of journalists here to report on them, but to basically advertise themselves to it.
00:28:34.560 You've got the Wall Street Journal handing out copies of its newspaper every few metres on the sidewalk.
00:28:38.460 You've got this big Mountain View lookout for the Wall Street Journal.
00:28:41.460 You've got New York Times journalists, CNBC.
00:28:43.900 They're all here to do business with these elites, not to report on them.
00:28:48.160 Here's an example. I'm looking at the CNBC building there.
00:28:51.780 CNBC is owned by Comcast, one of the largest media companies in the world,
00:28:56.440 market cap over $100 billion.
00:28:58.780 They are an official member of the World Economic Forum.
00:29:02.900 So are some of their journalists.
00:29:04.140 So they are not here to speak truth to power.
00:29:06.620 They're here to harmonize with power, to get the next narrative down, Pat,
00:29:11.300 to really get marching orders.
00:29:14.120 What's their progressive globalist messaging narrative agenda?
00:29:20.040 How do they talk about the war in Ukraine?
00:29:21.960 How do they talk about the pandemic and vaccines?
00:29:24.320 How do they talk about global warming?
00:29:26.080 They are here to sync up, to synchronize with power,
00:29:29.780 not to speak truth to power, but to speak propaganda for power.
00:29:35.060 I'll let you get back to it, Ezra.
00:29:36.560 Always a pleasure, sir.
00:29:37.380 To see you too.
00:29:37.980 Thanks, my friend.
00:29:38.500 Keep it up.
00:29:41.400 That was the great Ezra Levant.
00:29:44.240 Now, funnily enough, as the clip was playing,
00:29:47.480 I just saw briefly on my Twitter feed in front of me a clip that Ezra posted of him being weirdly confronted by, I don't know if you know him, there's this YouTuber feel-good Facebook guy named Naz Daly who has, I don't know, a bajillion followers on Facebook or YouTube and he makes a bunch of money and he has this little headquarters in, I believe it's in Dubai, somewhere in the United Arab Emirates.
00:30:11.940 And he does these videos where he, I think they're like a minute long and he showcases
00:30:17.080 something and it was just that like feel good, clickbaity Facebook content.
00:30:21.800 Anyway, he's like a total WEF fan boy.
00:30:25.140 They love him.
00:30:25.860 He loves them.
00:30:26.760 And he like went up to Ezra and was like starting to heckle him about whatever and
00:30:31.780 then tried to like whip up a bunch of other journalists to heckle him.
00:30:34.920 And I just, Ezra told me about this after it happened and I just saw the clip and it
00:30:38.800 was like very, very weird.
00:30:40.140 So maybe something you want to check out if you are looking for some cringeworthy Streets of Davos content.
00:30:46.780 But anyway, all of that is to say that independent media were the real victors here
00:30:51.960 because they not only push back against the prevailing narrative that we see from the WEF
00:30:57.560 and from governments like that of Canada,
00:31:00.800 but also the idea of independent media really being there and penetrating a space.
00:31:06.640 I mean, we don't penetrate the cabinets, but we penetrate the streets of Davos and doing so by
00:31:12.760 talking to people that are not used to being asked questions. And I don't want to do like
00:31:18.880 the mainstream media thing and give myself a gold star and a pat on the back for doing what is my
00:31:23.180 job. But I will tell you, it was very cold, not convoy cold, but very cold. And also you can't
00:31:30.400 prepare for an interview that you don't know will exist. And this was the most fun part of it,
00:31:35.920 actually, because I had a list going in of people I wanted to talk to. I said, I wanted to talk to
00:31:40.640 Chrystia Freeland. I wanted to talk to John Kerry. I wanted to talk to Daryl White of BMO. And
00:31:46.280 unfortunately, he looks like every other banker. So it was very difficult to find Daryl White
00:31:50.120 of BMO. And I had a couple of others that were on my list of it would be nice to talk to if,
00:31:55.480 but you never know who you're going to see until you see them. So what ends up happening is you
00:31:59.640 look at a person and you're like, is that who I think it is? Or you look at a name tag and say,
00:32:04.920 that name sounds familiar. Then you quickly Google it. And by the time your phone loads up who it is,
00:32:09.840 they're already like a block away. So you have very little time to prepare. You've just got to
00:32:14.320 go for it and be a little bit fearless. And if you have some existing thoughts on a subject like
00:32:19.660 I did on Ofcom, you can put them to the head of Ofcom. There are some people that walk by where
00:32:24.760 the feeling is, you know, I should probably talk to this person, but I don't know what to talk to
00:32:29.780 them about so i'll just say something and i had that happen with a couple of people one of them
00:32:35.320 was the prime minister of kurdistan now i know a little bit about kurdistan i don't consider
00:32:39.600 myself an expert and i certainly didn't have enough facts at the ready to do a proper interview
00:32:45.020 with the prime minister of kurdistan masrur barzani but i wanted to ask him something
00:32:50.040 so i picked the most low-hanging fruit question i could think of with zero notice
00:32:54.940 prime minister how would you like to see the west support kurdistan
00:33:01.000 we appreciate all the support that we've been receiving from the west and we hope that they
00:33:06.020 continue supporting us that was like the least constructive least productive interview you've
00:33:13.560 ever seen in your lives the question was like the lisa simpson asking uh mr burns uh i hear
00:33:20.640 your campaign has the success of a runaway freight train. Why are you so popular? It was,
00:33:25.340 hey, how can the West support you? And his answer, we appreciate the support of the West. And then
00:33:28.960 he just keeps on walking. So that was one. I can't say I'm proud of it as a feat of journalism,
00:33:33.200 but it was a fun, silly moment nonetheless. And the other one, which I think was a little bit
00:33:37.980 better journalism, and I hope you'll forgive me on this one because my microphone wasn't
00:33:42.400 functioning. So the audio was not great. Again, zero time to repair. But this was the president
00:33:48.080 of Serbia who I ran into oddly like 30 feet away from the Prime Minister of Kosovo which if you
00:33:54.900 know much about the history of the Balkans you know is probably like closer than is usually
00:33:59.160 safe for them to be but this is President Aleksandr Vucic. Do you think it's fair that Novak Djokovic
00:34:07.880 is still being denied access to some countries because of vaccine requirements? I believe that
00:34:13.140 that's one of the reasons that I believe that he's going to be very defiant and that he's going to
00:34:20.780 win the Australian Open this year. Thank you, sir. Well, not only does he believe that the
00:34:25.440 vaccine mandates in place in the US and elsewhere are unfair, but also that Novak Djokovic will be
00:34:31.300 defiant and win the Australian Open. Now, this is about as close to sports content as you get
00:34:37.460 on the Andrew Lawton Show. You don't get much more than that. So if you are here for tennis
00:34:42.900 news, that's all you're going to get. But you know what? Your mileage may vary. If Novak Djokovic
00:34:48.900 does win the Australian Open, I can say you heard it here first. But I just realized I have no idea
00:34:53.220 when the Australian Open is. For all I know, it could have happened like three days ago, and I
00:34:56.900 still would have had no idea about it. But I think tennis is the one with the rackets. Anyway,
00:35:02.520 the one point I want to just say here before we wrap things up about Davos is that it was so
00:35:09.760 important for me and i think for a lot of true north viewers that we were there to put forward
00:35:16.560 a critique of what happens there that doesn't delve into conspiracy theory and i maintain that
00:35:21.860 the wef the cbc all of these folks they absolutely love when people peddle conspiracy theories about
00:35:28.880 the reptilian you know lizard people in the swiss mountains because it means that they don't
00:35:33.440 actually have to defend against the legitimate criticisms because they can just point to
00:35:37.360 conspiracy theories and say, well, that's obviously untrue, and carry on. I mean, remember, I shared
00:35:42.460 that clip on this show last week, when that independent journalist, Masako Ganaha, walks up
00:35:48.100 to Klaus Schwab, and she wants to ask him a question. She's being very, very polite. I met
00:35:52.800 her in Davos, absolutely lovely woman. And Klaus Schwab asked her which media she's from. And she
00:35:59.360 says, independent media. And his first instinct then is to say, no, thank you. He turns around,
00:36:04.360 gets into his car and drives away because independent means you are not beholden to them
00:36:12.380 independent means you're actually prepared to ask difficult questions and that is not something they
00:36:17.680 are used to now i would absolutely love to sit down one-on-one with klaus schwab and say let's
00:36:24.860 have it out let's talk about the things that matter to you let's talk about what you actually
00:36:29.000 want. And when you make a claim like he did in the clip I shared earlier, that I just don't
00:36:34.000 persuade them. I just talk to them. I just have a table that I hold here and they sit at it. And
00:36:39.500 that's that. To push back, well, what about when you say this? But what about when you say this?
00:36:44.320 But what about when you talk about climate change advocacy? What about when you talk about
00:36:48.200 refining and revising capitalism? What about all of these proclamations in your book?
00:36:53.340 what are they if not manifestos to influence politicians i would love to ask him what the
00:37:01.660 point of his young global leaders program is because there's this trick you see in foreign
00:37:07.340 influencing as espionage now i want to make it clear i'm not talking about this in a wef context
00:37:13.060 and i'm talking about it in general terms where you get foreign agents that will pick a politician
00:37:19.480 out when they're early in their career. And they'll follow them along until they get more
00:37:25.000 and more important. And then by that point, the damage has been done. I mean, one great example
00:37:28.960 of this is Eric Swalwell in the United States, who was penetrated by Chinese foreign intelligence.
00:37:35.440 He was a nobody. He was a congressman. And before you know it, he's running for president. He's a
00:37:40.860 Democrat presidential candidate for nomination. This is the kind of thing that happens when you
00:37:46.600 are under the influence of a foreign agent. So there's value if you do want to persuade someone
00:37:53.220 and you do want to influence them to have some mechanism that follows them throughout their
00:37:58.680 career. And again, I want to make it clear, I'm not talking about this as being some foreign
00:38:03.360 espionage effort, but the Young Global Leaders Program gets politicians into the World Economic
00:38:09.600 Forum ecosystem when they are young. And also other folks, people that are not politicians that
00:38:14.940 are young global leaders that may in the future become politicians and all of a sudden they're
00:38:19.240 part of this network and they're part of this community and you watch this and you watch these
00:38:23.500 people and you say what's the point of this if not because they're trying to foster this global
00:38:29.280 network of like-minded people and that doesn't mean anyone that's ever been in that network
00:38:35.000 thinks the same way you have some people like Michelle Rempel-Garner who have been very critical
00:38:39.160 of it, same as Andrew Scheer, but you get other people that become very hugely involved in this
00:38:45.500 world. And Chrystia Freeland, who at one point in her career is writing the book on these out-of-touch
00:38:51.620 global elites, and the next time you see her is somehow hobnobbing with them and avoiding
00:38:56.200 journalists asking the questions that she would have probably asked and tried to ask at a different 1.00
00:39:01.560 point in her life. So all of that is to say this is an issue that matters. It's one that is relevant
00:39:07.120 to Canadians. It's one that's relevant to Canada. And I'm very proud of the work that True North did
00:39:11.940 shining a light on this when so few other outlets were. I like to end things on a lighter note. So
00:39:19.200 when I mentioned that you never know who you're going to see on the streets of Davos, one guy that
00:39:23.320 I kept running into because he kept just like walking around was the celebrity chef, Jose Andres.
00:39:28.340 Now, Jose Andres is a guy who practices what he preaches. When there's a disaster in the world,
00:39:33.160 He mobilizes, and his group, I think it's called World Kitchen or World Food Kitchen,
00:39:38.380 they get together and they feed people.
00:39:40.540 They're feeding people in Ukraine.
00:39:41.920 They fed people in other disaster zones.
00:39:44.640 Jose Andres is a WEF invited guest.
00:39:47.260 He was going into the elite group.
00:39:49.440 I saw him palling around with John Kerry.
00:39:52.140 I decided I'd just have a little bit of fun.
00:39:54.080 This was on the last day of the conference.
00:39:56.120 He was walking down the street, and I thought I would ask him a question that I know all
00:40:00.240 of you wanted to know the answer to.
00:40:03.160 chef do you have any good cricket recipes uh cricket yeah uh tacos uh from mexico and crickets
00:40:13.620 are great all right thank you very much we'll give it a try you've eaten yourself i haven't
00:40:17.200 had them yet but now you've given me the recipe so thank you thank you chef so if you don't know
00:40:24.500 the whole backstory on this is that you know the wef has among other things pushed the idea of
00:40:29.240 alternative proteins, bug proteins. So crickets are now synonymous with the WEF diet. Although
00:40:35.420 I will say I saw no crickets at my time in Davos. Lots of hot chocolate, even some vegan options,
00:40:40.620 but no crickets. So a big chef's walking by. You've got to ask him if he has any cricket
00:40:45.660 recipes. And he does. He starts talking about Mexican cricket tacos, which was great. I love
00:40:50.900 that the handler knew exactly where this was going and tried to intervene. Well, Chef Andres
00:40:57.400 is telling me how excited he is that someone's asking about cricket tacos in Mexico. The handler
00:41:02.680 was like, no, no, no, he's got to go. But the funny thing is like moments later, he walked back
00:41:06.640 the other way. And then moments after that, walked back the initial way. So the handler was not
00:41:12.100 actually trying to get him anywhere. He was just trying to get him away from talking about cricket.
00:41:16.080 So doing the hard hitting cricket journalism was only true North can. On that note, I want to just
00:41:21.660 say first and foremost, thank you to all of you out there who supported our Davos coverage by
00:41:28.120 watching it, sharing it, listening, reading, and also by financially supporting. This was something
00:41:33.720 we tried to keep as economical as possible. It was just me and a videographer there. We shared an
00:41:40.120 Airbnb. We did not fly business class, so I wasn't in the same cabin as Chrystia Freeland and the
00:41:45.680 president of BMO and Alan Doyle of the Great Big Sea nevertheless it was important and if there's
00:41:51.940 an appetite for it we'll certainly do it again next January if you want to chip in and support
00:41:57.200 this please do head on over to donate.tnc.news donate.tnc.news but I wanted to say thank you
00:42:04.000 and truly it was an absolute blast and knowing that I had all the support from people like you
00:42:09.080 sharing what we were putting out there so I'm actually missing my old Davo studio now if I if
00:42:14.960 If I were over in Davos, I would have had like a boar's head up on the wall there and a bearskin rug and the weird Alpine Lodge vibe.
00:42:22.180 So I'm back home now.
00:42:23.580 I didn't bring the boar's head with me because, you know, check bags, I never would have seen it.
00:42:27.100 So all that aside, thank you.
00:42:29.260 We will talk to you tomorrow with another edition of Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.
00:42:33.500 Thank you.
00:42:33.900 God bless and good day to you all.
00:42:39.020 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:42:41.180 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.