Juno News - September 15, 2022


The WEF in Chrystia Freeland’s own words


Episode Stats

Length

9 minutes

Words per Minute

149.17186

Word Count

1,405

Sentence Count

7

Hate Speech Sentences

1


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 hi everybody welcome back to the show glad you could join me once again I hope you're all doing
00:00:23.240 well and enjoying the last few days of the warm weather wherever you are in the country you'll
00:00:29.240 have to excuse my voice a little bit and if I seem a little underpowered today I'm down with
00:00:33.920 COVID and dealing with a bit of sore throat and nasal congestion but apart from these mild symptoms
00:00:39.680 I'm doing I'm doing well so today it's going to be just me talking about a recent column I wrote
00:00:46.460 for the National Post and it was on the World Economic Forum some of you will know that the
00:00:52.820 World Economic Forum has been in the news in Canada recently because its managing director
00:00:58.460 Adrian Monk was interviewed by the CBC recently now rather than challenging some of his assertions
00:01:06.140 some of Mr. Monk's assertions the CBC surprise surprise went along with this premise that
00:01:12.320 accusations of the World Economic Forum's agenda amount to misinformation and disinformation
00:01:18.980 that these are just a bunch of friendly people hanging out in the Swiss Alps just having a good
00:01:26.080 time and being a talking shop now I find this to be more than a little disingenuous from Mr. Monk
00:01:33.140 some of you will know that I have been critical not just of the World Economic Forum but of the
00:01:39.980 involvement of Canada's Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland at the highest levels of the
00:01:46.880 organization serving on their advisory board their top policy making body something I exposed in the
00:01:54.320 pages of the National Post back in February 2021 now the World Economic Forum folks make it very clear
00:02:02.560 that they're out to change the world and that they have a radical left ideology that they're promoting
00:02:08.240 centered around uh the so-called great reset stakeholder capitalism putting climate change above
00:02:15.520 everything else uh and all of this all of this would fundamentally alter the nature of our society
00:02:21.520 economy and our capitalist-based market system and the people sitting around the campfire in Davos
00:02:28.220 aren't just ordinary people like you and me these are presidents prime ministers billionaires and other
00:02:33.760 assorted members of the rich and powerful of the world so what they talk about what they discuss
00:02:39.040 at Davos and other such elite um platforms uh definitely has consequences for the rest of us
00:02:47.040 now with Chrystia Freeland right there at the very top um of the World Economic Forum's advisory board you
00:02:55.280 literally have a member of Klaus Schwab's board sitting at the cabinet table here in Canada
00:03:02.080 the irony is that Chrystia Freeland who was once a prolific journalist uh was a was once a staunch
00:03:08.240 critic of the World Economic Forum and wrote an excellent book about it called the Plutocrats
00:03:13.520 the rise of the new global super rich and the fall of everyone else which was published in 2012.
00:03:19.680 I had the pleasure of rereading this book a couple of weeks ago and as I reread the book I came to the
00:03:26.560 conclusion that Chrystia Freeland really has done a 180 from being an outsider looking in and being
00:03:33.040 critical of the organization and of the super elites to as a cozy and insider as you can get
00:03:40.080 and what's doubly ironic is that many of the critiques uh of what happens in Davos and the power of the
00:03:46.640 super rich and the super elites who gather there that are now being dismissed as rants and raves of
00:03:52.560 far-right conspiracy theorists are actually things that Freeland herself pointed out in her book so
00:03:59.040 if today's critics are right-wing conspiracy theorists uh today's critics of the World Economic Forum are
00:04:04.560 right-wing conspiracy theorists then where exactly does that leave Freeland uh now back to Mr. Monk uh the
00:04:11.920 managing director of the World Economic Forum his claim is that Davos is just an innocuous talking shop
00:04:17.760 but here's a telling passage from the plutocrats the vampire squid theory of the super elite is
00:04:23.200 entertaining and emotionally satisfying it can be fun to imagine the super elites who went to wall
00:04:29.040 street and their harvard classmates who became economics professors and those who became u.s senators
00:04:34.960 participating in a grand conspiracy hatched ideally at the porcelian club to rip off the middle class
00:04:42.400 but the impact of these networks is much less cynical and much more subtle though not necessarily of less
00:04:50.880 consequence so basically what Freeland is saying here is and something i describe in my column as well
00:04:59.280 is that when people spend a lot of time together in an environment where work and socializing
00:05:07.040 intermingle whether it is in a university fraternity at Davos every year or at other venues where power
00:05:14.880 elites routinely come together a shared mindset develops of what needs to be done whether it's to
00:05:22.960 combat inequality deal with climate change or how do you handle a pandemic like COVID-19 and it's also
00:05:32.240 well known that there's a revolving door between the top echelons of government the private sector
00:05:37.760 and academia none of this is hard to understand think about it when like-minded people get together
00:05:44.320 they reinforce each other's beliefs and meeting frequently and often is key to that so whether
00:05:51.360 it's a bunch of activists getting together to talk about their cause or a bunch of sports fans getting
00:05:57.360 together it's basically normal human psychology that people in this kind of situation will tend to
00:06:04.400 share assumptions beliefs views and even ideologies another myth that Freeland nicely dispels in my
00:06:11.120 opinion is the idea that wealthy and powerful people whom she calls plutocrats should be assumed to be
00:06:18.640 batting for free markets and individual liberty but here is her very on-point observation again
00:06:27.200 this is a quote from the book from Freeland's book on the plutocrats quote but the bigger issue of
00:06:33.600 the relationship between plutocrats and the state can't be reduced to business batting for smaller
00:06:39.440 government often a big intrusive state is the plutocrat's best friend true of state capitalist regimes
00:06:46.480 like china and russia and of industries like the defense business that live on state largesse or of
00:06:53.200 companies like the u.s steel industry under george w bush that have lobbied for and one protectionist
00:06:59.520 protectionist legislation so basically in other words there's often an unholy nexus between big
00:07:06.640 business and big government uh government restricts competition sets the rules of the game that often end
00:07:12.800 up favoring big established businesses uh just look at canada's telecom industry our cell phone providers
00:07:19.680 for example um these guys can turn around and rip us off and big business are also big donors to
00:07:26.160 political parties um and so that's how they're completely intertwined and oftentimes the loser is
00:07:32.960 average folks like you and i uh who don't necessarily have a voice at the table whether it's in davos
00:07:39.280 or at a thousand dollar plate uh fundraiser or at a fancy retreat at a resort by an investment bank or
00:07:46.320 management consultancy again this is not a conspiracy theory and what right-wing critics of the world
00:07:53.520 economic forum are saying today is an extension of what critics like christia freeland was saying
00:08:00.160 uh a decade ago so my question for christia freeland uh if i ever had the chance to ask her is what would
00:08:07.920 the christia freeland of 2012 who wrote the plutocrats think about the freeland of 2022 who sits at the
00:08:14.800 high table with the plutocrats in davos and that's a question we can all ask ourselves especially at a
00:08:22.000 time when there's an agenda to stifle legitimate criticism of outfits like the world economic forum
00:08:28.720 by claiming that it's all a far-right conspiracy theory and it amounts to misinformation and disinformation
00:08:35.840 i guess what that means is our political elites and their section and their friends in large sections of
00:08:42.480 the legacy media seem to believe that criticism from the left is legitimate and sincere but criticism
00:08:50.320 on the right is a crazy conspiracy theory but that's how it seems to roll in canada right now
00:08:57.520 anyway on that note i want to thank you for tuning in and if you want to read my column um the piece
00:09:03.280 that i refer to in this podcast please uh check it out at the national post it's called uh the best
00:09:09.200 critique of the world economic forum came from christia freeland herself see you next week