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

Misogynist Sentences

5

Hate Speech Sentences

2


Summary

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

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
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.
00:26:02.840 And normally if they were said by some madman, they would be dismissed,
00:26:06.960 except for the madman in question, who is actually the son of a literal Nazi.
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
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.