WEF’s Digital World: Of CBDCs & Digital IDs
The World Economic Forum is advancing the establishment of a digital world in which an individual’s every activity is placed on-line: personal finances, government services, consumer purchases, carbon footprint measurements, travel, health records – everything. In the next few columns we will explore the WEF’s digital initiatives and their implications.
Globalists are conjuring up a brave new world that is digital with everything easily and readily accessible on our handheld personal device. No more standing in lines at a government institution. No more cash. No more ID documents. The individual has complete control of his/her financial records with a swipe of their finger.
From the monetary and fiscal perspectives, the WEF espouses that this new world provides greater financial stability in the international marketplace for it permits central banks to plan and intervene in a country’s economy with the capability to fine-tune and direct spending patterns, industry sectors, and commodities.
That’s the utopia being presented with the adoption of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and digital IDs, as foretold by the World Economic Forum (WEF) and international bodies like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. That’s the mirage that we are stumbling towards.
The WEF has called on governments to begin implementing plans to eliminate physical cash and introduce a digital currency in its place. Countries are to drive towards attaining a “cashless society” where all commerce transactions will be digital. The rationale is that this is “safer”, “more secure”, and presents an opportunity for a much more stable marketplace. The end goal is to have a global monetary system that will be restricted to using CBDCs – which will give governments the ability to monitor and control the flow of commercial activities by its individuals and business entities.
CBDCs are but one aspect of the greater digital ID plan the globalist technocrats are working on. This in no way is conspiratorial – and, as stated, we are stumbling towards this reality.
In a 2021 guide entitled “Digital Identity Ecosystems: Unlocking New Value” the WEF expressed the “Digital Identity Urgency.” According to the guide, the COVID-19 pandemic can serve as the impetus to complete a global digital ID system. The WEF states that there is “the urgent need for greater international consistency, and collaboration across borders and sectors to enable individuals and organizations to both use and share their identity data more effectively and more securely.”
There is a revealing diagram on page 8 of this guide that lays out all the planned uses that would require a digital ID.
“CBDCs can replace cash”
In November 2023, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) published a handbook that had its director Kristalina Georgieva (also a WEF Trustee) argue that CBDCs can be an end to the cash-based economy, although she admitted it might take time. With the launch of the IMF handbook at the Singapore FinTech Festival, Georgieva stated, “CBDCs can replace cash, which is costly to distribute in island economies. They can offer resilience in more advanced economies. And they can improve financial inclusion where few hold bank accounts. CBDCs would offer a safe and low-cost alternative to cash. They would also offer a bridge to go between private monies and a yardstick to measure their value, just like cash today, which we can withdraw from our banks.”
Another benefit the IMF presents in this handbook is that, with the eventual establishment of CBDCs worldwide, countries can then move away from relying on the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency. This is described as a good thing that will guard against wild stock market fluctuations and bank runs. The global monetary system will be more stable and safe because it can be managed by the central banks – and globally by international bodies like the IMF and WEF.
In step with the publication of the IMF handbook, the WEF published a report on CBDCs that urges governments to begin “advancing cashless societies” and it encourages “public-private partnerships” to advance digital cash and promote digital payments in place of cash transactions. The report talks of a “significant momentum” that is building for CBDCs, citing “over 100 countries, representing more than 95 per cent of global gross domestic product (GDP), [are] actively engaging in research, development, pilots or fully-launched CBDC initiatives.”
This WEF claim that CBDCs are gaining traction was recently substantiated by a U.S. think tank, the Atlantic Council, which validated that a total of eleven countries (mostly small Caribbean states) have launched CBDCs and another 21 have begun pilot projects, including India, China, Australia and Sweden.
In the U.S., American President Joe Biden has signed an executive order that commits his administration to the global initiative, stating that America “places the highest urgency on research and development efforts into the potential design and deployment options of the United States CBDC.” Accordingly, the Biden administration is working towards a global financial system that will have “appropriate transparency, connectivity, and platform and architecture interoperability or transferability, as appropriate.”
Canada is also one of the 100 countries cited by the WEF. With Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland (also a WEF Trustee) leading the way, the Canadian government has committed to the WEF and IMF initiative and are intent on introducing CBDCs into Canada. In 2022, the Bank of Canada entered into a joint research initiative with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to research the design of CBDCs. This past year, the Bank of Canada announced its “development phase” for a Canadian CBDC, even though the bank received a clear message in its public consultation process that Canadians have no interest in pursuing CBDCs (85 per cent of those surveyed were against CBDCs).
The Trudeau Government and Bank of Canada are currently pressing forward with the global initiative – in fact, Canada is considered a global leader (and I suspect our country is viewed as a petrie dish for global financiers). At the beginning of this year, the Bank of Canada announced it is exploring the ways and means to introduce CBDCs and to develop an infrastructure to track and regulate financial transactions of businesses and individuals – again doing so at odds of the Canadian public sentiment. In January, the bank trademarked the “digital Canadian dollar” which can replace the cash “paper” dollar.
Additionally, the Trudeau government is playing a leadership role in advancing other initiatives that comprise the WEF’s global digital ID program. A few years ago the Canadian Bankers Association (CBA) was contracted by WEF to develop and advance a global digital ID program. The CBA and Canadian government officials began developing a program utilizing QR codes in a similar way that the Canadian ArriveCAN app was used as a screening tool to validate Canadians’ vaccination status in 2021. In coordination with this work, the Digital ID & Authentication Council of Canada announced work on national standards that “will define how digital ID will roll out across Canada.” This organization explains: “From Open Banking to e-health, digital ID is a key enabler in unlocking the next frontier of our digital economy.”
Given Canada is at the centre of the WEF’s CBDC and digital ID work, one might expect the Trudeau government and legacy media to report updates to Canadians on how the projects are progressing. However, Canadians have been kept in the dark while government officials at Transport Canada and ministers like Chrystia Freeland continue to meet with WEF technocrats to push their initiatives forward.
Let’s consider the known projects being spearheaded by the CBA and Trudeau government, and how this WEF work furthers the global agendas.