Juno News - January 15, 2023True North arrives in Davos for the WEF Annual Meeting
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Summary
The World Economic Forum is in Davos, Switzerland, and the media is here to cover it. Andrew Lawton and Andrew Lutton are here to report from inside and outside the congress center. They talk about the security situation, the media presence, and what they are looking forward to in the week ahead.
Transcript
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This is Andrew Lawton with True North coming to you from Davos, Switzerland, where we are here to
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cover the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting 2023. This is our second time at Davos, but there's
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a bit of a difference this time around because we have credentials. Yes, True North has been
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accredited, so we will be covering the annual meeting from inside and outside the Congress
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Center when dozens of world leaders, corporate leaders, are expected to descend on this small
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Swiss mountain village, which is, by WEF founder and chairman Klaus Schwab, deliberately remote.
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Only personal interaction creates a necessary level of trust, which we need so much in our
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fragmented and fractured world. To bring people together for an informal dialogue in a remote
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Swiss village such as Davos can be or should be a good recipe to restore trust.
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Yeah, so you can only build trust when you're in a place that is as remote as Davos. Well,
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we didn't let that deter us. We came in and we're actually here a day early to get a sense of what
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people can expect in the week ahead. The annual meeting officially starts off tomorrow night with
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a celebrity-laden awards gala featuring the opera singer Renee Fleming, the actor Idris Elba,
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and then the real political and corporate agenda starts Tuesday, and we will be covering that all,
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sharing you the best and brightest clips. But I wanted just to set the scene here because I know
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there's been a lot of discussion online about this idea that 5,000 Swiss troops have been coming
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along here to do security. Now, security so far has been very light. I've been able to walk around
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without anyone asking me anything. I know when I was here last time, there was a large police and
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military presence. That 5,000 number is actually nothing new. There's always been a lot of security
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surrounding this, so I haven't had any encounters with law enforcement and hope that will continue as
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the week goes on. But one of the reasons we're here is because so many of the journalists who come
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here are not actually interested in asking any tough questions. You can see if you look around,
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media companies are here as sponsors and invited guests. There's the Wall Street Journal with this
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beautiful mountain view shop that they have set up in front of the Ritzy Belvedere Hotel.
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You have journalists that are on the agenda with white badges, which means they are invited guests
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of the World Economic Forum, many of whom are coming back year after year. Remember, Chrystia Freeland,
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Canada's Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, used to attend this as a journalist reporting on it.
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Now she's on the Board of Trustees and will be speaking in the week ahead. So one of the questions we
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want to ask is, what are these prescriptions that they have here for us? These things that they have
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for our lives that we have to abide by? Things about what we eat, how we travel, what we're allowed
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to consume, things that affect employment and jobs and the economy, especially in countries like Canada,
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which are resource-producing nations. But the oil and gas sector is not exactly the good guy
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in the panel discussions that have taken place at WEF annual meetings in the past,
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and we suspect ones that are on the agenda for this time. There are a lot of Canadians here,
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from executives of SNC-Lavalin to the Editor-in-Chief of the Globe and Mail to Cabinet
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Ministers from the federal government and also the Quebec government. You have non-profit leaders,
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Indigenous leaders that are here. So even though Justin Trudeau is not here, there is a large
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Canadian contingent, a large Canadian delegation that's going to be here in Davos as invited guests.
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So far, we haven't encountered any other Canadian media here except for Rebel News,
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who alongside True North will be asking the questions. But from Davos, for True North,