Davos

From what you've taken in the past two and a half days, and I appreciate what you said earlier, that there's a heck of a lot there.

It reminded me of my visits to Davos, where I would spend four days just listening, making notes, and taking about three months for it all to get, to get distilled and, and absorbed.

But is there anything as we sit here now, Piet, that you can, you'll be taking home, thinking about, that makes you more excited about our country?

Yeah.

but the UK, Canada, Netherlands, France.

It's what Mark Carney, when he spoke in Davos-

Yes

... was talking about, the middle powers-

We actually have another one of our regular guests, Simon Miller, I've been discussing with him.

I think he's gonna join us on the podcast later this winter to tell us how his ski club repping went in Davos, and we'll find out more about that in due course.

But way back in episode 212, Lou Cameron-Hall, she shared her experience of doing the reps course.

Now, you know, listeners, I [laughs] obviously recommend you listen to that.

I, I used to work on the Hill for a while.

Um, and uh, I think that Mark Carney made the most incredible speech at Davos about middle-income countries.

And I would also say we have the joint connection about Commonwealth, and I've written a lot about how we need to change our conversations within the Commonwealth because of our shared legal, shared demo- democratic, shared values, um, and how we work together to make that, uh, uh, a place where it becomes a trusted network that creates peace, security, and economic opportunity.

Now, Canada has some of the most incredible minerals that the UK does not have.

Like it's not real.

Like Davos plan, you'll eat the bugs and you'll like it.

Like people reject it.

Like it's, that's not, it's not going to float.

I was in between London and New York talking to all the great and good and ugly and private equity.

And the next thing I knew, you know, we were signing on new year's day and then I was off to various, I was off to Davos and I went to, you know, some other, other, lots of other things.

And then I was in Monaco for the world finals.

So it's been a bit like being in a movie.

So who is going to be at this summit and what do you understand that they are after?

so the lineup that is coming out to toronto on september 14th 15th for this so-called canada investment summit is pretty high powered there's going to be the ceo of blackrock which is one of the largest asset managers in the world larry fink a very close friend of carney he's often you know on the scene with carney he's done many events with him he was the one who introduced carney when he was at the world economic forum right before he gave his Davos speech, but also a number of private equity firms, companies like Blackstone, the president of Blackstone, John Gray is going to be there, you know, private equity firm that's become notorious in a lot of circles for the way they've bought up housing in the post 2008. crisis, as well as sovereign wealth funds from places like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and huge pension funds from around the world, from Australia, from Europe and other places.

And so this is an exceedingly high powered lineup of investors.

And the one thing that they share in common is that virtually all of the attendees that have been confirmed so far are investors that are really interested in infrastructure.

But we are looking to the EU for that.

And it's interesting to see as we've heard since last April, is that Prime Minister Mark Carney is doing what no other leader until he stood up at Davos and said, the world has changed forever and we got to move forward into this new normal.

And since he has been standing up to Donald Trump, where others have taken a knee, It's interesting to see how some of the world leaders are joining with our Prime Minister to stand shoulder to shoulder and really be forthcoming in that.

It makes me really proud to be a Canadian, even though we're so much smaller than the U.S., so far less powerful, and, you know, there's going to be pain associated with this trade war and more, you know, if the worst case scenario unfolds and Americans don't somehow right the ship to some degree in the next midterm elections, you know, as you said, we're just going to have to prepare for the worst no matter what.