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Davos 2024: Queen Maxima advocates global digital ID for financial services, vaccine verification

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Queen Maxima of the Netherlands

From LifeSiteNews

By Tim Hinchliffe

Digital IDs are ‘good for school enrollment; it is also good for health – who actually got a vaccination or not; it’s very good actually to get your subsidies from the government,’ Queen Maxima of the Netherlands stated at the 2024 Davos summit.

Queen Maxima of the Netherlands tells the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos that digital ID is good for knowing “who actually got a vaccination or not” and for financial inclusion.

On Thursday the Dutch queen continued her crusade to see universal adoption of digital ID because she believes it is good for everything from opening a bank account to enrolling in school and for providing proof of vaccination, aka “vaccine passports.”

It [digital ID] is also good for school enrollment; it is also good for health – who actually got a vaccination or not; it’s very good actually to get your subsidies from the government.

Speaking at the WEF annual meeting panel entitled “Comparing Notes on Financial Inclusion,” Her Majesty said:

In order to open up an account, you need to have an ID. I have to say that when I started this job, there were actually very little countries in Africa or Latin America that had one ubiquitous type of ID, and certainly that was digital and certainly that was biometric.

We’ve really worked with all our partners to actually help grow this, and the interesting part of it is that yes, it is very necessary for financial services, but not only.

Beyond financial services, Queen Maxima said that digital ID was good for proving an individual’s vaccination status:

It is also good for school enrollment; it is also good for health – who actually got a vaccination or not; it’s very good actually to get your subsidies from the government.

The Dutch queen also highlighted that for the past 10 years, she had been working on developing Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), which is a digital stack consisting of digital ID, digital payments systems like Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), and massive data sharing.

“We’ve been working in the last 10 years on a notion that we call Digital Public Infrastructure. In our experiences in different countries, to actually have these sort of things that are actually very important,” the queen told the WEF panel.

“One of these is IDs, e-signature, digital ID, so that’s extremely important, even having a QR code legislation is very important,” she added.

Last November, the United Nations and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation launched their 50-in-5 campaign to get 50 countries to rollout at least one DPI component within the next five years:

Digital public infrastructure (DPI) – which refers to a secure and interoperable network of components that include digital payments, ID, and data exchange systems – is essential for participation in markets and society in a digital era.

As the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development, Queen Maxima has been pushing the digital ID agenda for a number of years.

Vaccine passports, by their very nature, serve as a form of digital identity, according to the WEF.

And the WEF envisions digital identity being linked to everything from financial services and healthcare records to travel, mobility, and digital governance.

WEF report on “Reimagining Digital ID” published in June 2023, says:

  • “Digital ID may weaken democracy and civil society.”
  • “The greatest risks arising from digital ID are exclusion, marginalization and oppression.”
  • Requiring any form of ID risks exacerbating fundamental social, political and economic challenges as conditional access of any kind always creates the possibility of discrimination and exclusion.”

This digital identity determines what products, services and information we can access – or, conversely, what is closed off to us

Queen Maxima is also a staunch advocate for Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), which cannot operate without a digital ID.

According to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Annual Economic Report 2021:

The most promising way of providing central bank money in the digital age is an account-based CBDC built on digital ID with official sector involvement…

Identification at some level is hence central in the design of CBDCs. This calls for a CBDC that is account-based and ultimately tied to a digital identity.

At this very moment, governments and central banks all over the world are exploring how to implement Central Bank Digital Currencies that are inextricably linked with pegging every citizen to a digital identity.

A CBDC adds another layer to digital ID, in that it can program permissions on purchases.

Speaking at the WEF’s 14th Annual Meeting of the New Champions, aka “Summer Davos,” in Tianjing, China, last year, Cornell University professor Eswar Prasad explained that governments could program CBDCs to restrict undesirable purchases and set expiry dates.

You could have a potentially […] darker world where the government decides that units of central bank money can be used to purchase some things, but not other things that it deems less desirable like say ammunition, or drugs, or pornography, or something of the sort.

The theme of this year’s WEF Annual Meeting is “Rebuilding Trust.”

Kicking off the meeting this week in his welcome address, WEF founder Klaus Schwab appointed himself and the Davos crowd “trustees” over humanity’s future.

Reprinted with permission from The Sociable.

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Kananaskis G7 meeting the right setting for U.S. and Canada to reassert energy ties

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Energy security, resilience and affordability have long been protected by a continentally integrated energy sector.

The G7 summit in Kananaskis, Alberta, offers a key platform to reassert how North American energy cooperation has made the U.S. and Canada stronger, according to a joint statement from The Heritage Foundation, the foremost American conservative think tank, and MEI, a pan-Canadian research and educational policy organization.

“Energy cooperation between Canada, Mexico and the United States is vital for the Western World’s energy security,” says Diana Furchtgott-Roth, director of the Center for Energy, Climate and Environment and the Herbert and Joyce Morgan Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and one of America’s most prominent energy experts. “Both President Trump and Prime Minister Carney share energy as a key priority for their respective administrations.

She added, “The G7 should embrace energy abundance by cooperating and committing to a rapid expansion of energy infrastructure. Members should commit to streamlined permitting, including a one-stop shop permitting and environmental review process, to unleash the capital investment necessary to make energy abundance a reality.”

North America’s energy industry is continentally integrated, benefitting from a blend of U.S. light crude oil and Mexican and Canadian heavy crude oil that keeps the continent’s refineries running smoothly.

Each day, Canada exports 2.8 million barrels of oil to the United States.

These get refined into gasoline, diesel and other higher value-added products that furnish the U.S. market with reliable and affordable energy, as well as exported to other countries, including some 780,000 barrels per day of finished products that get exported to Canada and 1.08 million barrels per day to Mexico.

A similar situation occurs with natural gas, where Canada ships 8.7 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day to the United States through a continental network of pipelines.

This gets consumed by U.S. households, as well as transformed into liquefied natural gas products, of which the United States exports 11.5 billion cubic feet per day, mostly from ports in Louisiana, Texas and Maryland.

“The abundance and complementarity of Canada and the United States’ energy resources have made both nations more prosperous and more secure in their supply,” says Daniel Dufort, president and CEO of the MEI. “Both countries stand to reduce dependence on Chinese and Russian energy by expanding their pipeline networks – the United States to the East and Canada to the West – to supply their European and Asian allies in an increasingly turbulent world.”

Under this scenario, Europe would buy more high-value light oil from the U.S., whose domestic needs would be back-stopped by lower-priced heavy oil imports from Canada, whereas Asia would consume more LNG from Canada, diminishing China and Russia’s economic and strategic leverage over it.

* * *

The MEI is an independent public policy think tank with offices in Montreal, Ottawa, and Calgary. Through its publications, media appearances, and advisory services to policymakers, the MEI stimulates public policy debate and reforms based on sound economics and entrepreneurship.

As the nation’s largest, most broadly supported conservative research and educational institution, The Heritage Foundation has been leading the American conservative movement since our founding in 1973. The Heritage Foundation reaches more than 10 million members, advocates, and concerned Americans every day with information on critical issues facing America.

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Poilievre on 2025 Election Interference – Carney sill hasn’t fired Liberal MP in Chinese election interference scandal

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From Conservative Party Communications

Yes. He must be disqualified. I find it incredible that Mark Carney would allow someone to run for his party that called for a Canadian citizen to be handed over to a foreign government on a bounty, a foreign government that would almost certainly execute that Canadian citizen.

 

“Think about that for a second. We have a Liberal MP saying that a Canadian citizen should be handed over to a foreign dictatorship to get a bounty so that that citizen could be murdered. And Mark Carney says he should stay on as a candidate. What does that say about whether Mark Carney would protect Canadians?

“Mark Carney is deeply conflicted. Just in November, he went to Beijing and secured a quarter-billion-dollar loan for his company from a state-owned Chinese bank. He’s deeply compromised, and he will never stand up for Canada against any foreign regime. It is another reason why Mr. Carney must show us all his assets, all the money he owes, all the money that his companies owe to foreign hostile regimes. And this story might not be entirely the story of the bounty, and a Liberal MP calling for a Canadian to be handed over for execution to a foreign government might not be something that the everyday Canadian can relate to because it’s so outrageous. But I ask you this, if Mark Carney would allow his Liberal MP to make a comment like this, when would he ever protect Canada or Canadians against foreign hostility?

“He has never put Canada first, and that’s why we cannot have a fourth Liberal term. After the Lost Liberal Decade, our country is a playground for foreign interference. Our economy is weaker than ever before. Our people more divided. We need a change to put Canada first with a new government that will stand up for the security and economy of our citizens and take back control of our destiny. Let’s bring it home.”

 

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