Juno News - WEF SPECIAL： Andrew Lawton LIVE from Davos

00:00:01.000 Welcome to Canada's most irreverent talk show.

00:00:04.840 This is The Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:12.100 Hello and welcome to you all.

00:00:14.860 This is another live edition of The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:00:18.060 Not just any old live edition of The Andrew Lawton Show,

00:00:20.600 but a live Davos edition of the program

00:00:23.300 coming to you from the village of Davos Closers

00:00:26.280 in the Swiss mountains in the Swiss Alps

00:00:28.700 where the World Economic Forum's 2023 annual meeting is taking place.

00:00:33.800 Now, today was, I believe, day three, and oh my goodness, was it a busy day.

00:00:40.020 Now, yesterday, we did pretty well with racking up interviews or attempted interviews.

00:00:45.040 I'm looking at you, Prime Minister of Belgium, with heads of government and heads of state.

00:00:49.720 Today, we were more at the sub-head of state, head of government level,

00:00:53.960 but still some very important encounters, I'd say, that we'll talk about on the program here

00:01:00.120 with the U.S. energy and climate change czar John Kerry with Canada's freedom-loving, well,

00:01:07.500 no, different person. With Chrystia Freeland, Canada's not exactly freedom-loving if you look

00:01:13.460 at her financial record as Minister of Finance, but she's here as a trustee of the WEF or as

00:01:19.740 Canada's Deputy Prime Minister. I'm not entirely sure. And who else do we have today? We did have

00:01:25.100 the Prime Minister of Kurdistan. Now, whether you call him a head of state is a very contentious

00:01:31.420 question. I believe that the Turks would not be too happy if I called him a head of state and the

00:01:35.960 Iraqis wouldn't be too happy if I called him a head of state. But he was a very kind man and I

00:01:40.260 didn't even have a question for him at the time. So I just blurted out the first thing and he gave

00:01:44.880 a very nondescript answer. But I'm not going to blame him for that one, as you'll learn a little

00:01:49.280 bit later on. And some other things that I'm going to share that came up in the course of covering

00:01:54.900 the World Economic Forum today. I want to start with a bit of a more serious note. I think a lot

00:02:02.300 of this is very serious. Yesterday, we had some fun with the hot chocolate and the organic healthy

00:02:07.140 juice bar. And I think all of that is really useful to illuminate the totality of what happens

00:02:12.780 here in Dobbles. But the big theme that we've been exploring since we've been here has been about

00:02:18.160 what exactly is the product being sold. And I do think that there is a question that needs to be

00:02:24.340 answered. As I've said time and time again about what happens when you take corporate leaders and

00:02:29.480 government leaders and you put them under one roof and you take away a level of scrutiny. And

00:02:34.040 again, I am very transparent about the fact that the World Economic Forum allowed me to go through

00:02:39.960 their media accreditation process. They gave me a press badge, but that press badge is not an

00:02:45.260 all access pass. There are a lot of places that are not within the realm of where I'm allowed to

00:02:50.480 go. There are areas where I can only go at certain times. And one of those is the main conference

00:02:55.700 center where I was able to be today for only about an hour. And at the same time, you also see people

00:03:01.860 just running around, walking up and down the street. You get the chance to run into people

00:03:06.260 in all sorts of places. And this morning, I actually had an ambitious goal. And I said to

00:03:11.700 my producer. I said to our team back in Canada, I want to talk to John Kerry today, and I want to

00:03:17.160 talk to Chrystia Freeland today. Literally, I should have just gotten the screenshot from our

00:03:21.060 internal working group chat room, whatever it's called. Those are the two I said I wanted to get

00:03:26.200 to. And lo and behold, today I encounter John Kerry and Chrystia Freeland. I think talk to

00:03:31.760 would be a bit of a stretch for reasons that you will see in just a moment here. And one of the big

00:03:37.040 things that I have been saying is that Chrystia Freeland, I believe, has to answer for how she

00:03:41.940 sits as a trustee with the WEF, how she sits as a senior official for the organization's oversight.

00:03:49.520 And the trustees, if you look on the WEF website, are tasked with fulfilling and upholding the

00:03:55.040 mandate and mission of the World Economic Forum, and also how she holds that role while sitting

00:04:00.880 as a minister of the crown, as the deputy prime minister specifically, a very senior role,

00:04:05.460 one might say. And I've never heard of any Canadian journalist asking her this question.

00:04:11.080 So I asked her myself.

00:04:16.780 Hi, Minister Andrew Lawton, True North. I was just wondering if it's a conflict of interest for you

00:04:20.540 to be a trustee while also a cabinet minister. Are you proud of the work? And if so, why is

00:04:25.800 there an issue answering a question about it? Enjoy your panel, Minister.

00:04:30.160 all right 17 seconds i asked her very simple very direct very politely is there a conflict

00:04:42.460 of interest in you having these two roles when i realized that she was just continue continuing to

00:04:48.480 beeline for the part that i wasn't allowed to go into i changed the tone a little bit and said okay

00:04:52.900 if this is something that you're completely proud of you own up to what's the issue answering a

00:04:57.560 question. Now, this is something that I struggle with because I actually like being able to have

00:05:03.760 conversations with people. And for the most part, I have had incredibly good fortune this week in

00:05:09.060 Davos with people, even those with whom I disagree on many things and fundamentally being all too

00:05:14.580 willing to chat and explain what it is that they're all about. I didn't actually come here

00:05:18.760 to get into fights with people. I came here to understand. I came here to shine a light. I came

00:05:23.540 here to, when necessary, hold up a bit of a mirror.

00:05:27.120 Chrystia Freeland, though, is not the Prime Minister of Luxembourg.

00:05:30.960 She is not the CEO of a company that owes me nothing.

00:05:33.380 She is not the representative of an organization that owes me nothing.

00:05:36.560 She's one of the few people here that is, in a very direct way, accountable to me.

00:05:42.560 Not me, Andrew Lawton, one individual person, but me as part of the collective of Canadians.

00:05:49.300 Set aside the fact that I'm a journalist here, set aside the fact that I'm a journalist on the right end of the spectrum,

00:05:55.080 I am a Canadian citizen asking what I think is a very legitimate question to the Deputy Prime Minister of my country.

00:06:05.220 And the fact that I don't get the opportunity to do that without flying to Switzerland is, I think, quite shameful.

00:06:12.600 I have emailed many requests over the years to Chrystia Freeland's office for a number of things.

00:06:18.180 every single one of them has gone unresponded to. This is the woman who, in 2019, when I was

00:06:24.320 covering the Global Conference for Media Freedom, which she co-hosted along with the UK, originally

00:06:29.580 tried to ban True North, ban me, and also Sheila Gunn-Reed of Rebel News from attending the press

00:06:35.800 conference. You've heard this story before. It was only when, to their credit, a number of mainstream

00:06:40.660 media reporters put their feet down and said this isn't going to fly, that the minister's office

00:06:46.620 relented. But I have tried to interview her. I've tried to talk to her on the campaign trail. I've

00:06:52.500 tried to run into her. I know David Menzies ran into her at some event in Toronto and she did the

00:06:56.680 same thing. She just quickly bolted into a back door. But I actually don't get the opportunity

00:07:02.540 in my own country to ask Minister Freeland a question. She isn't the reason I flew over to

00:07:10.120 Switzerland. We were going to come before we even knew for sure she would be speaking. But that

00:07:14.300 doesn't mean it's not an important message that she's sending, which is that she doesn't actually

00:07:20.000 care. Does she not care about her political critics? Does she not care about press freedom?

00:07:25.520 Does she not care about answering questions about her connections to the WEF? In fairness to Minister

00:07:30.700 Freeland, I think I could have asked her what her favorite ice cream flavor was, and she still 0.95

00:07:34.560 probably would have continued walking away, ignoring the fact that I was standing there.

00:07:38.720 but this is something that is quite shameful and at the risk of extrapolating too much i think is

00:07:45.600 exactly the problem with davos is that the elites come here because they often believe it's their

00:07:50.340 safe space from any criticism their safe space from any of these discussions and any very real

00:07:56.220 and substantive questions i mean christopher freeland gets up on a panel and she's all too

00:08:00.320 willing to be candid about ukraine to be candid about this and canada's foreign policy and that

00:08:05.520 but she won't be candid about her own relationship with the very organization.

00:08:10.840 So while I do not want to make myself the story,

00:08:13.440 and I don't want to make this show about,

00:08:15.000 oh boohoo, Christopher Freeland won't talk to me,

00:08:16.840 which to be honest, it probably makes for a better day sometimes.

00:08:19.640 I do think it's a very important message that she's sending,

00:08:23.060 and not a positive message.

00:08:24.980 And one that I think underscores the very real challenges

00:08:27.660 of this elite world that's being cultivated here,

00:08:31.140 where they genuinely believe that they're above answering questions.

00:08:35.520 And Christopher Freeland was certainly one example of that today, and it's one where I think, again, she owes me something as a Canadian citizen that is slightly different than other people here that perhaps have a moral obligation to answer questions but don't actually have a democratic mandate.

00:08:51.460 But again, just to give you the whole picture here, John Kerry also didn't exactly want to talk.

00:08:57.140 And he was an interesting case because he was one that I learned was doing an event outside of the main Davos perimeter, the main WEF perimeter.

00:09:06.280 He was doing an event in a church that, like anything else in Davos, is apparently for sale and was rented out by CNBC to host a nonstop stream of programming.

00:09:16.480 And he was doing this talk on sustainability.

00:09:18.660 he was doing it at the altar of climate change and I just ducked out a little bit early because

00:09:23.900 I said you know what there's only one there are only two ways into this building and two ways out

00:09:27.900 and it is not the front door that he's going to go out so I just waited around the back with my

00:09:32.680 videographer and lo and behold John Kerry came by and I wanted to ask again a very real question

00:09:37.840 that you could put to anyone who talks about transitioning away from oil and gas anyone who

00:09:42.480 talks about the road to net zero anyone who talks about reducing emissions which is why do

00:09:48.420 why does everyone in the world, the Western world, the industrialized world, the developed world,

00:09:54.840 whatever you want to call it, why does everyone in producing nations have to suffer for an ambition

00:10:01.680 that the nations actually causing the problem don't have a solution for? And I'm talking of

00:10:08.280 course about China. China is without a doubt the world's largest emitter. I don't have the chart 0.98

00:10:13.640 in front of me right now. But I know that it has the emissions of pretty much the bulk of the

00:10:19.060 least industrialized nations combined. And even when you look at the top 10 ranking, United States

00:10:25.340 is a very heavy emitter relative to other countries, but still nowhere near China. Next,

00:10:31.380 you typically have India. Canada is just a tiny little wee little fraction. Canada could drop 0.97

00:10:36.300 its emissions to zero overnight and it would do pretty much nothing for the world's grandiose

00:10:43.920 net zero commitment. But people like John Kerry don't actually want to talk about China. They

00:10:49.360 occasionally say China is going to be a partner in climate, ignoring the fact that China is ramping

00:10:54.040 up coal production by the day, especially with rising energy costs. So it was a very simple

00:10:59.740 question and I think a very fair question and something that a seasoned politician as

00:11:03.980 John Kerry should have been able to answer, but he didn't.

00:11:09.500 Why should anyone else in the world have to deal with emissions reductions when China is not?

00:11:15.160 You can't speak about China's impact, sir?

00:11:18.400 Why should we have to deal with carbon prices when China is not lowering its emissions?

00:11:24.100 Absolutely. You're between me and him. It's okay.

00:11:26.840 Now, at the end there, we left that in because I just want to give you a bit of context on this.

00:11:34.700 And I've posted a video just of this with a bit more information as well.

00:11:39.400 But what happened was my videographer, Sean, who's here in Davos doing tremendous work,

00:11:44.260 he has this fancy camera that means he has to stay pretty far away from me to get the whole picture.

00:11:51.340 I had something to do with resolution.

00:11:52.580 I don't know the technical details.

00:11:54.120 I just hold the microphone and go where I need to.

00:11:56.300 But as a result, it meant that the security guards needed to divide and conquer. 1.00

00:12:00.480 So the female officer or security guard, I don't know what she was, 0.99

00:12:05.320 goes over to Sean and just attempts to obscure the view with an iPad or a MacBook or whatever it was.

00:12:12.100 And then I just like keep sauntering all over to John Kerry.

00:12:15.460 And that brings me to one of the police officers in John Kerry's personal security detail,

00:12:20.900 who by this time, I'm like maybe eight, nine feet from John Kerry.

00:12:25.480 and this police officer is between me and John Kerry

00:12:28.720 and he turns around and tells me to keep my distance.

00:12:31.340 And what I'm saying at the end there is,

00:12:33.400 yeah, I mean, you're between me and him.

00:12:34.940 I'm pretty sure the distance is being kept here.

00:12:37.420 But I made it through the day

00:12:38.400 without getting the handcuffs thrown on me.

00:12:40.140 I did not get an answer to the question at all.

00:12:42.580 And again, why are these people above scrutiny?

00:12:46.000 Now, John Kerry is a fascinating character

00:12:48.680 because he doesn't even hide his climate hypocrisy.

00:12:51.840 He literally flies around the world, 0.82

00:12:53.920 often on private jets. He jets to this summit, this conference, this treaty meeting, this and

00:12:58.980 that. He goes everywhere to tell everyone that they should do a lot less, that they should reduce

00:13:03.200 their emissions. They should ease their carbon footprint. He takes the limo from one mansion

00:13:09.660 to the helicopter, to the private jet, to the helicopter, to the limo of the other mansion.

00:13:14.320 And then he gets on the yacht and goes over to the island and tells us that we need to travel less.

00:13:19.040 And it was interesting because in that discussion he was having this morning in the church for CNBC, he joked about how much he flies as the climate czar of the United States.

00:13:31.180 What has been the most challenging aspect of your role as special end for climate?

00:13:41.320 Making my flights on time.

00:13:43.240 oh isn't that so cute he's got so much travel as the climate envoy for the united states he has

00:13:54.200 trouble making his flights on time missing from that little joke is that when you fly private i

00:13:58.920 don't think they take off without you so his schedule is probably a little bit more easy to

00:14:03.280 manage than he is letting on there but there is this category that is different than left and

00:14:09.780 right. It's this categorization that involves the elites versus the everyman, the people that make

00:14:14.580 the rules, the people that live by the rules, the people that issue the proclamations, and those who

00:14:19.700 are accountable to them and beholden to them just by virtue of not having the power or influence to

00:14:25.280 push back against them. And I think more and more people are pushing back against them. There was

00:14:31.460 one gentleman I met, and again, I don't know him very well. He came up to me and I did a cursory

00:14:36.380 Google of him just to make sure he was who he said he was. But he is a Dutch MP that came to Davos

00:14:41.600 to, I don't know if protest is the right word, but certainly to speak out against it. And he

00:14:46.640 represented, as he introduced himself to me, the only anti-globalist party in the Netherlands. So

00:14:52.960 I don't know if he's the Maxime Bernier of the Netherlands, but he certainly had a fascinating

00:14:58.040 account for why he was there. And while I don't know Dutch politics too, too much, we certainly

00:15:03.620 were able to talk about some of the bigger picture things together. This is my interview today with

00:15:08.140 MP Terry Baudet. So what brings you to the World Economic Forum here in Davos? Well basically I'm

00:15:16.040 here to show the people in my country what is going on here. Most people have a vague notion

00:15:23.020 of yeah there's something going on with the world leaders at a summit somewhere in Switzerland but

00:15:28.080 most people have never seen the promenade here. They've never seen the watch towers. They haven't

00:15:33.220 they haven't got a clue of what actually is going on here.

00:15:36.260 So I'm here as a reporter, if you like, to show the people what's going on

00:15:41.260 and to tell them more about the World Economic Forum

00:15:43.300 and the meaning of the plans that are being shaped here.

00:15:47.480 Because I think it's very dangerous and it's very important

00:15:49.540 that people have more information about what's really going on.

00:15:53.620 Now, obviously, you're not an invited guest of the World Economic Forum.

00:15:56.960 You don't have a seat at the table there.

00:15:58.680 Your prime minister, Mr. Rutte, was invited here.

00:16:01.720 What is your view on the discussions that take place in there on behalf of the people of the Netherlands?

00:16:07.040 Well, obviously, most people here agree on the main direction the world should be heading in.

00:16:14.000 And I think that's the wrong direction.

00:16:15.720 But most of them agree that we need climate change measures.

00:16:18.700 We need a personal carbon dioxide budget.

00:16:21.000 We need more migration, less national sovereignty.

00:16:24.280 We need a CBDC to control over our currency through digital means and so on and so forth.

00:16:30.080 and Roethe obviously fits in perfectly well with that stream of thought.

00:16:35.100 It's my conviction that during the COVID situation,

00:16:39.460 these globalist plans really came to the surface of general politics in our several nation states.

00:16:47.080 And now they're going to try to push that through even faster and even harder.

00:16:52.200 And that's why I'm here.

00:16:53.820 And I'm not really disappointed not being invited

00:16:56.740 because all the things that happen on the main stage,

00:16:59.660 you know that's live streamed we can watch that from our homes but what's

00:17:03.260 happening here in in the in the streets in the cafes that's where all the

00:17:08.660 networking is happening that's where they make friends that's where the

00:17:11.660 public private partnerships take place so that means that big government and

00:17:16.760 big business are essentially in a merger now and that's why they're all aligned

00:17:22.340 because the big companies make the money the big governments provide all the

00:17:26.360 immunity and the financial securities and then both of them take control over humanity and that's

00:17:32.760 what's happening today last year we saw dutch farmers rise up against their government in a

00:17:37.260 way that was very inspirational to people i know in canada we had the trucker protest last year

00:17:41.600 where are the dutch citizens on this do you think they finally had enough and do you think that they

00:17:45.820 will actually push for an exit from the european union once and for all my feeling is that there

00:17:51.500 a very general discontent among the Dutch population as well as the population in several

00:17:57.260 of our other western countries but people are very hesitant to draw the obvious conclusions being

00:18:05.100 we need to stop being in the world economic forum we need to stop being in the eu we need to stop

00:18:09.900 being in the world health organization and so on and and so i think we're in the middle of a

00:18:15.100 process where people are sort of getting what the consequences are if you don't want to go along

00:18:20.780 this path okay then you have to choose the other path the alternative and at our party is that

00:18:25.980 alternative for the netherlands and i really hope we'll have several alternatives in other european

00:18:31.660 and western countries as well in political terms so one of the interesting things that i i take

00:18:40.380 away from that and i i'd love to do a little bit more uh research into him and perhaps have him on

00:18:45.260 the show in a bit more of a longer form later on, is that Monsieur Baudet was saying that he would

00:18:51.340 actually like to be in the room. He would like to be there as part of these discussions. And he

00:18:55.900 doesn't have that opportunity as a member of the opposition. It is typically just governments that

00:19:00.740 are invited by the World Economic Forum. But I find this a bit interesting in the Canadian context

00:19:05.660 because right now we have people like Conservative leader Pierre Falieve and the Premier of Alberta,

00:19:10.580 Danielle Smith, saying that they want their ministers and caucus members to boycott it.

00:19:15.280 They want them to have nothing to do with it.

00:19:17.700 And I think it's an understandable impulse to that.

00:19:20.780 But I also understand the opposing point of that, which is that you want to have your

00:19:26.580 people there so that there is some pushback, so that you are actually calling out some

00:19:32.060 of the nonsense that comes out.

00:19:33.580 And I mean, whether it means anything or not, I have no idea.

00:19:36.380 And I do want you to let me know in the comments here.

00:19:38.160 Just take hypothetically a Danielle Smith figure.

00:19:41.580 Would you like to have a Danielle Smith there in Davos pushing back against it?

00:19:47.160 Or would you rather they say, we want nothing to do with this, we're staying back?

00:19:51.100 Because there have been some people I've met that have not gone along with the prevailing narrative there.

00:19:57.280 One of them is a man whose name you will know.

00:19:59.460 Now, the name you know is not this guy, but it's this guy's father, Ross Perot Jr.,

00:20:04.640 who was very frank and very candid

00:20:07.300 and basically pointed to the group in the Congress Center in Davos

00:20:11.940 and said they have no idea what they're doing when it comes to inflation.

00:20:17.860 What should politicians do to rein in inflation?

00:20:20.980 Cut spending.

00:20:23.040 It's that simple. 0.64

00:20:24.360 Why don't they want to do that?

00:20:25.500 The governments are spending way too much money and it's causing inflation. 0.76

00:20:28.460 The politicians love to give away money.

00:20:30.220 Until the voters say no, it'll continue.

00:20:32.900 Why aren't voters saying no to that?

00:20:34.280 Why do voters like government?

00:20:35.540 It's because I ask our U.S. leaders, I say, why do we have these deficits?

00:20:39.340 So they go, Ross, none of the voters bring it up to us.

00:20:42.280 So the voters have got to get focused.

00:20:44.020 I think we've gone through this era of zero interest rate.

00:20:47.600 So we've had the cheapest money in human history.

00:20:51.340 So we've never lived through this phase.

00:20:53.500 And I think when money was so cheap, we got very careless, very sloppy.

00:20:57.640 It's going to cause, it's caused inflation, will continue to cause inflation until we pull it back.

00:21:02.360 Do the people here get that?

00:21:04.280 No, not really. No, because there are a lot of politicians here, so they don't quite get it.

00:21:09.720 And not many politicians want to really prescribe tough medicine.

00:21:14.420 And the world's going to go through some hard times as we get back in shape.

00:21:22.180 I'm just looking. We have a little messaging group.

00:21:25.860 If you use Slack, you'll know what I'm talking about here with our team.

00:21:28.920 And one of my colleagues is now debating who's cooler between Ross Perot Jr. and Terry Baudet.

00:21:35.580 He thinks, I think Ross has the edge because of Ross was wearing the aviator sunglasses.

00:21:39.740 So Ross Perot Jr. was very cool, very frank and saying, yeah, they don't get it.

00:21:44.560 They're just going to keep spending money.

00:21:46.060 They're going to keep printing money.

00:21:47.580 And I think actually Ross Perot and Pierre Polyev may hit it off with that form of messaging.

00:21:53.480 But the reason I bring this up is because we get some crazy ideas that come out or things

00:22:00.540 that I think deserve to be challenged and often aren't.

00:22:03.280 I was watching some of the panel discussions today.

00:22:06.100 Like I was saying earlier, there's so much going on.

00:22:08.580 You can't be everywhere.

00:22:09.620 You have to decide whether you want to be on the streets, whether you want to be in

00:22:12.180 the rooms.

00:22:12.820 And even in the rooms, there are multiple discussions going on at the same time.

00:22:16.680 So you actually cannot be, you need like one of those men in black shapeshifting.

00:22:21.080 Do they do the time thing?

00:22:23.440 Can they time travel, Men in Black? 0.89

00:22:24.840 I don't know. 1.00

00:22:25.200 Maybe I'm mixing up my shows.

00:22:26.540 But you need the ability to just freeze time and keep going back and redoing different

00:22:30.320 things because this is the only way you can figure out the totality of what's happening.

00:22:36.240 But there was one panel that I came across that was well into the evening here, actually,

00:22:41.620 in which there was an oil and gas CEO, and they were talking about the just transition.

00:22:46.820 Now, this is something you're hearing a lot more of now in Davos and in Canada,

00:22:51.100 because the Canadian government has been all over the just transition,

00:22:55.480 which basically means they want to transition away from oil and gas,

00:22:59.340 but they don't want to do it in a just way.

00:23:01.320 They want to retrain people, let all those oil workers find jobs in tech,

00:23:05.620 teach them how to code and whatnot.

00:23:07.520 And in Davos, there are countless panels dealing with it directly and indirectly.

00:23:12.480 And one of them was taking place this evening,

00:23:14.360 and it had the CEO of Cepsa, I believe it's called,

00:23:18.220 which is a Spanish oil and gas company.

00:23:20.500 And I thought, oh, that's great.

00:23:21.540 You know, there's an oil CEO on the panel,

00:23:23.600 which means there'll be at least a little bit of pushback,

00:23:26.220 a little bit of recognition

00:23:27.920 that the industry itself has a role to play

00:23:31.320 and maybe we shouldn't just completely crap on them.

00:23:34.540 Well, this is what Mr. Oil and Gas CEO said

00:23:37.580 on the transition panel.

00:23:40.080 And on that last one,

00:23:41.400 I think I will combine it with your question

00:23:43.860 what it would be your wish is to get much higher carbon prices and to use that money to subsidize

00:23:50.600 clean energies. It's very, very simple. But in Europe, we've seen an enormous response this year,

00:23:56.300 20% less natural gas usage. Why? It was very expensive. It's very simple. It's a very capitalist

00:24:03.320 intervention, but just make what you try to avoid expensive and subsidize the thing that you try to

00:24:09.220 build. It's not difficult, but we're not doing it. Certainly not globally. Great. Thank you.

00:24:16.640 So that was Martin Wetzaler. And I apologize if I'm mispronouncing his name, but I actually don't

00:24:22.640 particularly care because I think he's just a contemptible human being for saying that. And

00:24:26.880 I was a bit perplexed. I'm like, wait a minute. Why is the oil and gas CEO saying so frankly that

00:24:32.020 we need a bigger global carbon tax? We need to take people's money to subsidize more green energy

00:24:38.180 and acknowledging that this is very punitive in nature.

00:24:42.060 When he looks at Europe, which right now has extraordinary heating costs

00:24:46.360 that are preventing people from being able to actually heat their homes.

00:24:49.160 And he says, well, natural gas usage in Europe went down 20%.

00:24:52.580 Why? Because it was expensive.

00:24:54.880 And his answer is, let's make things more expensive deliberately

00:24:58.380 so people can afford them.

00:25:00.600 And then we use that money to finance green energy.

00:25:03.840 And I was, again, this strikes me as very odd.

00:25:07.040 So I did a little bit of digging.

00:25:08.020 and find out that, of course, this company has been on the forefront of developing what

00:25:12.220 they call green hydrogen technology to replace oil and gas.

00:25:15.960 So the company has seen the writing on the wall.

00:25:19.980 And they realize that government is going to be phasing out oil and gas anyway.

00:25:24.980 So they just want to cash in on those sweet, sweet, sweet subsidies.

00:25:28.460 So he's saying as an oil and gas guy, yeah, I'm going to be progressive, bring it on,

00:25:32.540 bring on the carbon tax, and then use it to subsidize all these other things.

00:25:36.060 By the way, did you know we happen to be developing these other things here, yeah?

00:25:40.940 So if people use oil and gas, he gets paid.

00:25:43.480 And if people don't use oil and gas, he gets paid.

00:25:46.000 What a fantastic grip.

00:25:47.560 This is the kind of thing you can only come up with at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

00:25:52.760 And this is what I mean about whether there might be value in someone that has a genuinely

00:25:57.580 different perspective having a seat at the table.

00:26:00.960 because sometimes people are very open about their dislike of debate.

00:26:06.900 One particularly noteworthy panel discussion that took place was about the pandemic.

00:26:11.900 Now, I will be explaining this a little bit more in a video we are going to put out tomorrow.

00:26:17.180 But COVID is pretty well over here.

00:26:19.800 There are little vestiges of it, little hazes of COVID stuff.

00:26:24.220 But for the most part, the pandemic's over.

00:26:26.620 No one's wearing masks.

00:26:27.680 Everyone's shaking hands.

00:26:28.780 It doesn't really matter.

00:26:29.700 but they had one discussion about covid and the ceo of moderna as defend bencel was on that panel

00:26:37.980 and he actually took aim at open debate believe it or not the extent of this misinformation when

00:26:46.160 it comes when it comes to vaccination i think has as a somebody who works in the media i mean that

00:26:51.640 was just overwhelming to see all of that across all the channels right yes and i exactly agree

00:26:57.120 with panelists which is i think in some countries you know you saw scientific debate in national tv

00:27:02.640 at prime time so you can imagine how people were scared you know then as i've said you know a lot

00:27:08.320 of political debate in some countries and the us was kind of maybe one of the worst place in the

00:27:12.560 world and you saw the differences of countries where all the parties would say you know this

00:27:17.840 has been approved by the regulators clinical studies have been done you should get your your

00:27:22.720 your vaccines and so on and then as i said i mean the social media was just terrible

00:27:27.840 just terrible and so at a time of uncertainty where people were scared for their loved ones

00:27:34.000 you know many people you know locked downs it was very hard for everybody from just mental health

00:27:40.000 standpoint uh when you you can't police with all that environment you could see some countries

00:27:45.040 where you had scientific debate and political debate and social media if you had those three

00:27:48.800 things and vaccine rates are very very low absolutely

00:27:56.080 so the ceo of moderna's position is that when there was scientific debate political debate

00:28:02.720 and policy debate in media and politics on social media vaccination rates were lower

00:28:09.120 and he says that's a bad thing now obviously if you are the ceo of moderna you make money when

00:28:14.240 more people get vaccinated. So I get why from a corporate perspective, less vaccination is a bad

00:28:20.060 thing, but less debate is not a bad thing. And this is an opinion that should not go unchecked.

00:28:27.420 This is an opinion that I find abhorrent. And why are you not winning the debate then? That would

00:28:31.980 be my question to him. And if I see him tomorrow or Friday, that's the question I'm going to ask.

00:28:36.640 Well, why were you not able to sell your product for lack of a term in that debate? Why could you

00:28:42.620 not rise to the challenge? Why are you so afraid of debate? And this is something, I mean, if you

00:28:48.840 want to see a very cringeworthy, but still noteworthy video from Davos, Ezra Levant and

00:28:55.220 Avi Amini of Rebel News, they were attempting to question the CEO of Pfizer, Albert Borla.

00:29:01.240 And as it so happened, I was in the middle of my interview with Terry Bourdais when Albert

00:29:06.000 Borla walked by and I just saw like Ezra and Avi and their crew just bolt. And I'm like, who is

00:29:10.460 that and then I learned a little bit later on. But he didn't want to answer any question. He gave

00:29:15.060 them the John Kerry. He gave them the Christopher Freeland. Tony Blair, another one who, by the way,

00:29:19.340 today was completely uninterested in even so much as making eye contact. But the reason I bring this

00:29:25.480 up is because when you have people that openly say they do not want public debate, this is a

00:29:31.520 pharmaceutical company selling a product that was very hastily assembled no matter how you stand or

00:29:36.760 how you land on the vaccine. Why are we accepting that debate and discussion in society, in the

00:29:43.800 political realm, on social media are inherently bad things? And this does rub me the wrong way.

00:29:49.740 And again, I have to question why. Why no one is paying attention to this? Where are the media here?

00:29:56.500 I mean, there are a number of people from all around the world that have their orange badges

00:30:00.240 that are here as press from mostly European countries. And again, I don't know the makeup

00:30:05.680 of the media room. I don't know some of these players in Europe, but certainly no Canadian

00:30:10.120 media here that I've seen. No one asking Christian Freeland the questions. No one asking the Moderna

00:30:15.180 CEO the questions. No one asking the oil and gas executives who somehow love carbon pricing

00:30:19.840 for answers to their seemingly irreconcilable positions. And that is why it is so important

00:30:27.780 to be here. Now, I came to Davos for the first time in May. I never in a million years thought

00:30:32.920 I would go to Davos, let alone twice. 0.85

00:30:35.140 I'm still not an invited, white-badged elite. 0.74

00:30:38.460 But I think there is tremendous value.

00:30:40.700 And when I mentioned on the show yesterday, and I'll repeat it now,

00:30:44.820 that it was a very illuminating experience sitting in the main conference hall

00:30:49.340 when the Prime Minister of Spain, a head of government, was speaking.

00:30:52.880 And it's basically an empty room.

00:30:55.360 There were a couple of European leaders there.

00:30:57.620 There were some staffers, security guys, a few journalists.

00:31:00.880 but he's speaking to an empty room and watching the feed, you'd never know that.

00:31:06.480 You'd think that, wow, basically he's addressing the who's who of the world.

00:31:11.440 And in the end, no one shows up for a prime minister.

00:31:13.700 I've had bigger audiences than the prime minister of Spain does,

00:31:16.300 which again, a sentence that I never thought I would say.

00:31:19.460 And there are certain things you only get when you're on the ground.

00:31:22.680 And on that, I guess I agree with Klaus Schwab that you need to have things in person

00:31:26.500 because the internet is a very poor substitute.

00:31:29.800 So I'm going to put in a little bit of a plug here, if I may, for contributing to True North's coverage of Davos.

00:31:35.960 Our donation portal is up at donate.tnc.news, donate.tnc.news.

00:31:41.480 We have tried to keep costs down as best as we can, but it is an expensive place and it's a deliberately remote place.

00:31:48.220 They actually try to make it so that it's hard to get to.

00:31:51.560 And that is, I think, all the more important, what makes it all the more important for us to be here.

00:31:56.340 So if you can chip in, please do.

00:31:58.480 And if you can't, you can contribute by sharing our content and making sure we're pushing back against the echo chamber that tends to dominate here.

00:32:05.840 So we'll have more footage in the days to come.

00:32:07.700 And I might actually do, once I'm back in Canada, a bit of a recap show with some of the footage we didn't get to in the program.

00:32:14.200 But if you follow me and True North as well on Twitter and Facebook, you'll get access to footage that doesn't make it into the show or you'll see it before it makes it into the show.

00:32:23.780 And we thank you so much for covering all of that and encouraging us.

00:32:27.060 That does it for me. Next program, I will be back in Canada, but I do thank you for tuning into these special live editions from Davos of The Andrew Lawton Show from Switzerland.

00:32:36.640 Thank you, God bless, and good day to you all.

00:32:40.000 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - January 17, 2023

WEF SPECIAL： Andrew Lawton LIVE from Davos

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