Juno News - January 15, 2023


True North arrives in Davos for the WEF Annual Meeting


Episode Stats

Length

3 minutes

Words per Minute

184.5443

Word Count

679

Sentence Count

28

Hate Speech Sentences

1


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 This is Andrew Lawton with True North coming to you from Davos, Switzerland, where we are here to
00:00:05.360 cover the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting 2023. This is our second time at Davos, but there's
00:00:11.900 a bit of a difference this time around because we have credentials. Yes, True North has been
00:00:16.880 accredited, so we will be covering the annual meeting from inside and outside the Congress
00:00:21.500 Center when dozens of world leaders, corporate leaders, are expected to descend on this small
00:00:26.900 Swiss mountain village, which is, by WEF founder and chairman Klaus Schwab, deliberately remote.
00:00:34.340 Only personal interaction creates a necessary level of trust, which we need so much in our
00:00:43.200 fragmented and fractured world. To bring people together for an informal dialogue in a remote
00:00:51.760 Swiss village such as Davos can be or should be a good recipe to restore trust.
00:01:01.200 Yeah, so you can only build trust when you're in a place that is as remote as Davos. Well,
00:01:06.180 we didn't let that deter us. We came in and we're actually here a day early to get a sense of what
00:01:11.300 people can expect in the week ahead. The annual meeting officially starts off tomorrow night with
00:01:16.020 a celebrity-laden awards gala featuring the opera singer Renee Fleming, the actor Idris Elba,
00:01:22.020 and then the real political and corporate agenda starts Tuesday, and we will be covering that all,
00:01:27.200 sharing you the best and brightest clips. But I wanted just to set the scene here because I know
00:01:31.100 there's been a lot of discussion online about this idea that 5,000 Swiss troops have been coming
00:01:36.620 along here to do security. Now, security so far has been very light. I've been able to walk around
00:01:41.660 without anyone asking me anything. I know when I was here last time, there was a large police and
00:01:46.060 military presence. That 5,000 number is actually nothing new. There's always been a lot of security
00:01:51.400 surrounding this, so I haven't had any encounters with law enforcement and hope that will continue as
00:01:56.600 the week goes on. But one of the reasons we're here is because so many of the journalists who come
00:02:00.600 here are not actually interested in asking any tough questions. You can see if you look around,
00:02:05.780 media companies are here as sponsors and invited guests. There's the Wall Street Journal with this
00:02:10.940 beautiful mountain view shop that they have set up in front of the Ritzy Belvedere Hotel.
00:02:16.040 You have journalists that are on the agenda with white badges, which means they are invited guests
00:02:20.480 of the World Economic Forum, many of whom are coming back year after year. Remember, Chrystia Freeland,
00:02:26.020 Canada's Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, used to attend this as a journalist reporting on it.
00:02:31.580 Now she's on the Board of Trustees and will be speaking in the week ahead. So one of the questions we
00:02:37.040 want to ask is, what are these prescriptions that they have here for us? These things that they have
00:02:42.720 for our lives that we have to abide by? Things about what we eat, how we travel, what we're allowed
00:02:49.020 to consume, things that affect employment and jobs and the economy, especially in countries like Canada,
00:02:54.360 which are resource-producing nations. But the oil and gas sector is not exactly the good guy
00:02:59.780 in the panel discussions that have taken place at WEF annual meetings in the past,
00:03:04.240 and we suspect ones that are on the agenda for this time. There are a lot of Canadians here,
00:03:09.520 from executives of SNC-Lavalin to the Editor-in-Chief of the Globe and Mail to Cabinet
00:03:14.660 Ministers from the federal government and also the Quebec government. You have non-profit leaders,
00:03:20.380 Indigenous leaders that are here. So even though Justin Trudeau is not here, there is a large
00:03:24.580 Canadian contingent, a large Canadian delegation that's going to be here in Davos as invited guests.
00:03:30.500 So far, we haven't encountered any other Canadian media here except for Rebel News,
00:03:35.040 who alongside True North will be asking the questions. But from Davos, for True North,
00:03:39.740 this is Andrew Lutton.