Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland will be jetting across the sky on the Canadian taxpayer dime for an all expenses paid trip to the World Economic Forums annual meeting.
WEF will be hosting its 2023 annual meeting next week in the Swiss mountain town of Davos.
The focus this year is taking aim at the worlds current decentralized state. The conference theme is “Cooperation in a Fragmented World,” which is necessary because of the “sheer number of ongoing crises” facing the world right now, according to the WEF and calling for “collective” action.
There’s Currently no available public details if Freeland will be speaking. While she did not attend the 2022 meeting she did appear at a virtually held panel about “stakeholder capitalism” at the 2021 event.
Freeland has attended several previous Davos meetings and sits on the WEF’s board of trustees.
WEF projects an image of itself as a platform to bring together leaders from the public and private sectors to tackle global challenges.
At a pre-meeting press conference held Tuesday morning, WEF founder and Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab said this year’s meeting will have “unprecedented” participation, including dozens of finance ministers and foreign ministers from countries around the world. He added to address the root causes of global “fragmentation,” the organization must reinforce cooperation between the government and business sectors.
“At the same time, there must be the recognition that economic development needs to be made more resilient, more sustainable and nobody should be left behind,” said Schwab.
A “hypocritical gathering of billionaires, multinationals and powerful politicians” who “lecture working class people to stop buying gasoline.” Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre called the annual meetings, is what the annual WEF meeting is:
Poilievre, who was competing to lead the Conservatives, pledged to remove cabinet members from his cabinet if they attended “that big fancy conference of billionaires,” and to forbid them from attending.
Danielle Smith, the premier of Alberta, has also criticised the WEF, branding it an organisation of “anti-democratic elites” that are hostile to Alberta and seeking for Canadians to “own nothing and be happy.”
