Welcome back. We're going to get underway and head you toward lunch. So that is an attempt to impress on the panelists and those of you who will have questions and comments later on to be as brief as possible, but as complete as possible. I'm Jim Hoagland from the aforesaid Washington Post. And we have a panel today that is well-qualified to talk about whether the European social model in a time of globalization, in a time when competitiveness and the export model seem to dominate the world scene. Unfortunately, we are missing one of our panelists, Mona Salin, who is the former deputy prime minister of Sweden was not able to be with us today because of family reasons. As an American, I regret this very much because she has quite a very interesting set of quotes on wiki quotes, which you can all go and look up. But one that caught my eye that I wanted to talk to her about was the quote where Mona says, for me, tax is the finest example of what politics really is and that paying taxes is cool. You can imagine that in the Congress of the United States these words might be seen as heresy. I want to get started with the conversation right away and we'll ask, first of all, for comments from Joaquin Almunia, who is vice president and the commissioner for competition at the European Commission. Joaquin. Thank you very much. Well, this question about the future of the European social model is not new, has not been provoked by the crisis. This question was on the front of many debates before the crisis, even during the 19s and probably during the 80s. We have in Europe, in some of the European member states, mainly northern member states, the best examples of what the welfare state is, a social model, is what the social policies can deliver to the citizens, how to protect and to ensure social rights for citizens, and at the same time we have in the European Union, in particular after the last enlargement in 2004, 2007, we have member states, countries, that never knew what a social model is in European terms. So we have, on the one hand, the need to strengthen the basis, the grounds of the possibilities of building a social model or reinforcing the present social models in Europe. This means growth, and we badly need growth. This means productivity and employment. This means flexibility to adapt the social services, the social policies to the new challenges and to the new features of our societies that are not the same, are very different than the ones we knew in the past. We need to face aging, we need to tackle the immigration, we need to recognize the fact that the family structure has changed. We need to be fully aware about the new inequalities that are growing in our societies. But the question, and this will be my second and last remark in this first intervention, many of these decisions should be adopted at the national level. The European institutions, we don't have the possibility to organize the adequate strategy for improvements in the educational sector, in the health sector, this belongs and will continue to belong to the national level of decisions, but at the same time without a good functioning of our economic and monetary union, without a more efficient strategy to ensure sustainable growth in Europe, our member states will not be able to do what they say they want to do. And one of the very difficult elements of this discussion and is one of the links that needs to be improved between the national level and the EU level is the tax issue. Single member states in Europe, within a single market in a global economy with free movement of capital is not sovereign to decide whatever they like. And tax issues and at the same time at the EU level, every tax decision requires unanimity so one single member state can bloke and can veto. Improvements in the way we can organize our tax systems in a way consistent with growth and at the same time able to fund the welfare state, the social policies and the social model. So we have a lot of challenges, but the question again is not the new one. Joaquin, let me refer again to the American experience and ask you the leading question on your last point. Where would the leadership come from for a tax reform, a tax revision on a European level? I think the European Council, the head of the state and government, yesterday we had here in the dinner the President of the European Council, the 28th head of the state and government and in particular within the 18 leaders of the Euro area and the European Parliament, they need to discuss seriously what needs to be done in a single market, in an economic and monetary union to get a more efficient tax system consistent with our growth strategies and at the same time able to fund our needs from the expenditure side of our budgets because we need to recognize that since many years and in particular this has been accelerated since 2008, since the beginning of this crisis, the tax levels are not enough to finance the expenditures and debt levels have increased, have accelerated in their increased strength since 2007, 2008 and in some of our member states, this path is really unsustainable. So we need to deliver it, we need to reduce the indefinance level but it's not political, it's not socially possible to cut in a very, very sharp way the expenditure side in the social policies that represents more than 50% of the total public expenditure in most of our member states and this required a very serious discussion on what are the taxes that can be adopted without raising barriers in our internal market and in a consistent way with growth. It's not an easy debate, it is a very essential one. Let's pass this hot potato along to Eve Lutterm who is Deputy Secretary General of the OECD, former Belgian Prime Minister. Eve as a Christian Democrat leader in Europe, are you, do you sense an eagerness for debate about tax policies? And secondly, I wonder if in your remarks you could reflect on what it means to be European in the social model sense, what is distinctive about that and how that can be maintained in the era of globalization. Thank you very much to put it a little bit provocative, I think you can turn in fact the central question of this part of the debate the other way around. Personally I think you could just ask how will emerging economies, how will they build up a social security system, comprehensive social security system to render their economic development sustainable? I think with our knowledge we have today we can say that social cohesion, that investing in all talents, having all people on board is I think a precondition to have sustainable development and so to say I think we approach the whole of the question in a very defensive way, I think you really can put it the other way around and the main part of the problem seen from a global point of view in terms of the human beings is more at the side of the emerging economies which are sometimes confronted with very huge aging population problems like China for instance and the question is how, will they build up systems like we already have once again because to my opinion a good social cohesion and a system that provides this is really a precondition for sustainable development, economic prosperity in the long run. Secondly I think when we talk about European welfare states we have to be well aware of the fact that there is not such a thing like the European social model. In fact we have a coexistence of at least three to four different models. I want to elaborate on the characteristics which is very clear that this Scandinavian model that the Rhineland model with Germany, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg and so on and then France and I would say the Anglo-Saxon model, the UK and then the et cetera model of some countries in the southern part of Europe and then some central and eastern European countries that have built it up and completed it more and adapted more recently this is quite different. I think it's better and I come to the third point to put it in terms of what is the burden social cohesion and solidarity puts on the economy and there on average the 34 OECD countries which are globally spoken the most developed industrial countries in the world we see that 22% of GDP on average is dedicated social policy with some countries with a very low part of their GDP like Chile, some other countries which are still building up this social welfare state and at the top we have countries like let me give two very different examples France and Sweden which are countries that are performing in an economic point of view very differently with different success with 30% of the GDP dedicated to the social welfare state. So I think it's a better figure to measure what kind of burden you put on the economy I would add that the distinction we make between a social, comprehensive social security system of which the initiatives come from the public authority and on the other hand in your country for instance the so-called private, privately organized the private provision of social services which well the results are not so convincing always I mean this antagony between the two is a little bit artificial because for instance in the European system we tax social loins and you give lots of tax deductions to encourage people through computers or not to sign in on social security, health, insurance systems and so on. Last but not least I think we really need reforms but some of the reforms have already been put in place partly but it's of course longer careers the aging of the population when you add 15 to 20 years of life expectancy where you have to draw the consequences and you have to have longer careers. I think in terms of health insurance you have to have more selectivity and in the whole of the social security schemes it's very obvious that especially in Europe there's a need for more efficiency and more effectiveness and I would add and that I refer to the PISA results of the PISA review I think it was two or three weeks ago we presented them. I think especially Europe has to be aware of the fact that skills or the currency of the 21st century at least and maybe of the future more globally spoken and so invest more in resilience than in security is really very important for Europe. Social resiliency and individual resiliency becomes more important as a concept than security and it means giving people the tools, investing of the tools, the capacities of the people when they are unemployed, when they have problems to react themselves there must be more responsibility put on the person themselves, the citizen themselves. Do you think that the economic crisis that Europe has just been through seems to be recovering from now has created the political will to bring about the reforms you've suggested or will we need further crisis, further developments? Well first of all like the commissioner said it's in terms of competencies it's not the competence of the European Union until now to act very actively in the field of social security but I think to have been one of them I think that all political leaders in Europe are well aware of the fact that in terms of competitiveness things have to change. But also there let's be realistic. You know the highest tax wedge in European Union for the moment is I think it's the German. In Germany you have the most important tax wedge and you see that nevertheless this economy is very well performing because in terms of other field domains the way companies are organized, innovation the labour cost as a whole they have done a lot of efforts. But to answer your question I think the European leaders know that there is a very important task to render the European economy more competitive but it is really a broader problem than only the problem of the labour cost. It's certainly a problem of the labour cost and we have to have a shift from financing our social security schemes for instance based on the labour on the cost of labour and taxing labour to other ways of taxing and having the money for the schemes but it's only a part of the big problem of the competitiveness of the European Union that would lead us much more further than the five minutes but we can come back on this issue later. Yes, we'll have a chance to. Jean Pissani-Ferry is known to many of you from his work at Brugale in Brussels. He is now, as I gather it, the eminence gris of the group of eminence grises that the French K-Dorsey has assembled in the policy planning staff. You've heard two of our panelists say that in fact Europe doesn't function at the European level, there is not a social model. Is that the problem? Thank you, let me first correct. I don't belong to K-Dorsey, I'm responsible for policy planning reporting to the Prime Minister. Yes, I think it's not... There is this perception of a European social model. Mrs Merkel famously said that we represent 7% of all GDP and 25% of all population and 25% of all GDP but 50% of social spending. So there must be an issue there. And I think that's factually correct, obviously. That's striking, but that's a bit misleading for the reason you gave, actually. So I think we have a common set of preferences with very different institutions. The national institutions are different. You have very different pension system. You have labor markets institutions are different. So anything that is about reform immediately goes to the national level. Now there are some common issues. I would emphasize first what you said. Normally you don't put education as one of the pillars of the social model. I think we should. Europe started with universal education. That's how we built our prosperity and we are under-investing in education. I mean, we're bad in the ranking of the PISA rankings. The first European country is number eight. There are seven Asian countries or cities above. Sweden, we consider Sweden one of the generals of the European social model. It's dismal in terms of the PISA ranking. We are pretty mediocre in France. I think we are definitely under-investing. And that's having prosperity without having education. That's basically rent seeking. And there are not many rents we can draw on. There are still rents. That's why we are prosperous. But if we continue under-investing in education, the prosperity is not going to stay because the rents are going to go. So really that's one of the pillars. And that's very much coherent with a modern approach to social policies. I'm referring to a Mattias Sen and people who say it's really building capabilities. And building capabilities starts at school and even starts at the primary school. And that's where we are feeling. So I would say that about the school. Now let me take another example on pension. I think, again, I agree with you, we shouldn't confuse aging and pensions. I mean, aging is, I mean, we are head in terms of aging, well, we're behind Japan, that we're head of a number of other countries, but aging is a universal phenomenon, and it's good. And so we have a problem with our pension system. But it's not the fact that it's a public pension system, the fact that there's aging behind it, there's little growth. So what should we do? First of all, there's issue of diversification. Basically everything is invested in sort of a single asset, which is gross of the national economy with the pay-as-you-go systems. So the problem is that this diversification should have started earlier. It hasn't started in some countries. So we are invested, the wealth of the income of the future pension is invested in the single asset, which is the domestic economy. What can be done is to try to make the adjustment between pensions and the gross rate more automatic. And that's the spirit of the reform that was introduced in Sweden with the notional accounts. So that instead of having to bet on a future gross rate and to tell people you're going to get that, that provided gross is what we expect it to be, it should be recognized that the ability to provide pension is linked to the performance of the economy. And so there should be more automatic adjustment and that's the system of notional accounts that was put in place in some countries. So that's the direction of reform, I think, for us. And now we turn to Didier Rindeers, who's deputy prime minister and foreign affairs minister of Belgium. He represents the mouvement reformatel, which I believe is a liberal in the European sense party. So I would bring my tax question back to you, but also ask you to sketch for us what is the center-right version of the European social model? I don't know if it's possible to have a center-right vision for the entire Europe because we don't have all the same approach, maybe in the different member states, because first of all, the social issue, it's a national one. If you look to the situation now, the social security systems and all those systems also in education are first of all at the national level. But it's possible to see some elements at the open level or so. Of course, we need to sustain girls. We had the capacity in the last year to resist, again, the financial crisis, and that's maybe the first way to sustain a social model in the open level. But I'm sure that from my point of view and for many liberals in Europe, we had many discussions in the last years about that. We need to do more at the open level. It will be maybe interesting to see the evolution in Germany now. After many years, it's possible due to a new coalition to discuss about a minimum wage. And I'm sure that if you look to the situation in Europe, we have a federal approach just for the monetary policy with one currency for next month's 18 member states and with only one central bank. But we are still with the different member states acting for the budget and also for the tax policy and of course for the social policy. Is it possible to think about, as a liberal person, as two, three elements? First, to have some common approaches for minimum rules, two examples. We have for the moment such a discussion in Germany about the minimum wage. Why not the same discussion at the open level? Maybe not with the same level, but a minimum. In Belgium for the moment, we have a minimum wage between 10 and maybe 11 euro for one hour at work. In Germany, they are discussing about 8.75, something like that. But we have for the moment, people coming from the south of Europe or the eastern part at work in Belgium with some fields with less than three euros for one hour. Is it possible to discuss at the open level about the minimum? I don't know if it's possible to have a minimum like in Belgium from 10 or 11, but maybe to start, I don't know, with five, four or six and then to increase and to have such a capacity to avoid social dumping. And I'm sure that to do that, we need to organize the same kind of federal approach for the budgetary policy. We are trying to do that with the banking union, but maybe with some reference in the tax systems and in the social system. The same issue for the posting of workers. We have for the moment many, many competition about different companies with workers coming from different parts of Europe. I don't want to avoid that, but maybe to have some minimum rules. And is it possible to do that with all the member states? I'm not sure. If the term was saying that there are different social models in Europe. And of course, I'm sure that it's needed maybe to start with the members of the eurozone. That's the core of the European Union. Maybe I saw with those countries who want to be members later of the eurozone, but if there are orders, it doesn't want, it's not a reason to go further. And so I'm sure that we need to have some minimum rules in the tax systems, also in the social issues at the open level. And that's maybe the way to sing in the near future because just to say the last word, in my mind, all model in comparison with orders in other parts of the world. I don't speak about China or Russia, but also about the US. It's to say that we are fighting against poverty. And normally in Europe, and maybe in the northern part of Europe, if you have a job, you need to go out of the poverty. And now there is a debate to get an exam in Germany. Is it possible to have a job and to stay in the poverty? Normally in all social security model, if you have a job, you are going out. And you receive, maybe if you don't have a job, a lot of help to don't go to the poverty. And that's the reason why I'm sure that we need to fix a lot of minimum rules in the entire Europe. Of course to do that, there are other investment and we'll come back maybe on that later in education. It's true, as I've said, that is quite important. And maybe we need to agree with some mobility in Europe. And we have seen that if you look to the situation in Portugal, in Spain, in other countries for the moment, in Italy since the beginning of this year, it's a lot of people, maybe 200,000 people going out of Italy to search a job in another part of Europe. So mobility is maybe also a part of the issue, but at least with minimum rules. And so I don't hesitate to speak about a federal model. That doesn't mean the United States of Europe. It's not the US model for the social issue. But some kind of minimum rules at the open level. That's the real goal for the next years. I think that's a very useful clarification. I mean, I think there is at the European level a greater degree of social cohesion and concern about one's fellow citizens. And there are in other parts of the world, including the United States. You used a phrase that I think might help us understand a little more that I would like to ask you to clarify. Social dumping, it's important to avoid social dumping. What do you mean? But like in the tax issues, it's the same. To give an example in taxation, because I was in charge for 12 years for the finance department in Belgium. We have tried to help before the crisis, before 2008. During many years with the structural funds in Europe, we have tried to help some new member states or some member states to reach the average of development in Europe. And just an example, in Ireland, we have spent a lot of money coming from the structural funds. But due to that, it was possible to have a corporate taxation in Ireland with 12.5% as a rate. And come by reason with an average of maybe more than 25 in the rest of Europe. Is it acceptable to spend a lot of money coming from the European level to help different regional countries and then to see such a reaction? On social side, it's the same. The social dumping for the moment, it's due to two facts. Or we have some companies coming from one country in the European Union working in another one. But with not an application of the national social security system of the country where they are working, but their own social security, to give an example, not to speak all the time about the construction or building sector or transport on the ground. But in the aviation sector, we have some companies in the low cost coming in different parts of Europe and working there with their own social security model and not the social security model of the country where they are working. But it's the same now for the moment we are confronting in Belgium, in other countries. I spoke about the posting of workers. We have Belgium companies having now a subsidiary in Portugal or in Poland to apply in Belgium. No more the social model of Belgium but the social model of Portugal or Poland. And in the economic crisis, of course, there is a stress on that. And is it possible to go further with that? I'm not sure. Result, I said, some minimum rules. Not to ask to the entire Europe to apply the same rules in Belgium, but at least to have some minimum standards in the entire European Union. And if we are not able to do that, we will have more and more reactions against the European model. And we will see that. But for the next elections, I don't want to be in a difficult way in the next weeks of having seen that, but I'm afraid to have maybe one-third of the next European Parliament with your skeptics and with populists. So with many people against the European Union, if we don't can take care on that also with some approach at the European level on social side, we will have more and more difficulties. So to be concrete, I'm sure that we need not to politicize the European debate, not just to add in many countries, people in favor of different process and your skeptics. We need to speak about employment, labor market, labor policy, tax issues, social issues with a real political debate from left side, from right side, from the liberal, the socialist and others, but we need to have a real political debate on that. Eve, we need to politicize the European question. I think I will be very brief. I won't stand in the next European elections, but I would like to underline the truth of what Didier is saying. I think it's really crucial for the Commission, for the European Council to have a message for these people. I give you two examples, recent examples from my former constituency. I went to see a company that produce vegetables in frozen form. Well, people there are replaced now by Romanian workers that are so to say employed in Romania, but that are doing the job for a lower salary. And in Zebrugge, which is one of the main ports in Belgium, the container traffic, the modal shift is organized with truckers that are in fact employed so to say by Romanian company and that are competing with, and in terms of salary, it puts competing with Flemish people, Belgian truck drivers. And for ordinary citizens in Europe, Europe is perceived, as Didier says, not only as your in favor of Europe, of your against Europe, it's an institution like all other political institutions and it is worth being part of the debate when it delivers for its citizens. And for the moment, lots of ordinary people are perceiving Europe as a part of the problem instead of a part of solution. I know it's very easy, what I do now to say this, it's more difficult to put solutions forward, but I really would not underestimate this effect in the outcome of the next European elections. Solutions are what John's supposed to give us, that's part of his job. Can you talk a little bit about these problems that have been uncovered, but also give us a sense, for those of us in the rest of the world, I will now insert the journalistic so what question, why should we care about the success or failure of the European social model? Well, let me give you one reason, as we said, I mean there is a lot of resistance now in various countries about this development that are perceived as being unfair. One particular reaction that didn't get so much noticed was David Cameron's change of view on immigration. The UK, at the time of the first European enlargement, was the first country to say welcome, welcome to these workers from the Eastern European countries. Now they have completely changed course, and he says their minions and the Bulgarians, because the other ones have a right to come, they're not welcome. And that's a result of the reaction of public opinion in the UK. So if we see a situation where, for all these reasons, we're putting breaks more and more on mobility, on the integration of services markets, they were resisted also at the time of the services directive, we may well end up in a situation where we have still one currency, but a very fragmented economy, and that wouldn't work. We can't have a single currency, we're at the same time putting barrier, putting borders between those economies. One of the reason we had the euro crisis was that we had a euro economy that was not integrated enough, and for that reason we could have very large divergence in inflation rates for a very long time, and that led to the crisis. So the answer to this problem should be more integration, but this does not go without conditions that make it acceptable for the people. So I think Didier Anders is very coherent. I mean, he's been one of those fighting for the survival of the euro, and he says also that we need to enlarge the compact of social rights that are considered common and necessary for those participating in integration. Joaquin, what do you think is the biggest single social problem that the European Union, therefore the commission faces, and what do you intend to do about it? Well, during these years, indeed, the problem number one is unemployment that is not evenly distributed within the different member states. You have Germany and some other countries around Germany that have even lower unemployment rates now that the day before the crisis started, whereas Greece or my own country, Spain, have a 26% of unemployment, more than 50% of youth unemployment, and the lack of possibilities to use the human resources they have that is one of the most important assets these countries have. How to deal with these unemployment problems requires different actions. Of course, we have some macroeconomic problems that are not being solved within the EU, and in particular within the Economic and Monetary Union. The fact that the periphery of the euro area is undergoing a very serious adjustment, not only fiscal adjustment, the current account adjustment is impressive in countries such as Greece or Portugal or Spain or others, whereas the surplus countries are not investing the excess savings that they have, and this creates problems from the demand side that are not helpful to open possibilities for the countries that needs to absorb unemployment and to create opportunities for their people. And at the same time, we have another very important social problem that apparently is a paradox, but is taking place at the second time, immigration, because part of our countries in Europe needs labor force from abroad, in some cases from other member states of the union, with the political tensions and the social tensions that were discussed by Didier and Jean, and when we project our labor force evolution and the needs in the future, we realize that it's not only about immigrants coming from other parts of Europe, but immigrants coming from abroad. But our societies are not prepared for this, and the rise of populism and the rise of eurosceptics that is a real difficulty for the next European elections in five months' time is partly based on this immigration tensions and this feeling that those who come from abroad will hijack our public services, our social policies, and all this. And this requires a huge political effort, and no one can deal with these challenges in Europe in an individual basis. The European solutions are more efficient to tackle these big challenges, but at the same time, the defensive attitudes of the national political leaders and the national political forces tends to embrace protectionist attitudes, nationalistic trends, defensive positions, and we are there in a very difficult situation where the solutions that are needed and that needs to be discussed and put in place gradually, but without waiting for any other moment, we will not have good moments to discuss these issues, are there, and at the same time, the political trends are defensive, our protectionists are nationalistic, and the very European idea that was very helpful for many reasons in Europe during the last 15 years at this moment is in a very difficult situation. Is it possible to establish a relationship between immigration flows and competitiveness and the national case? Well, I think for a country to be competitive, a lot of things needs to be done, a modern industrial policy, improving financial flows, the adequate institutional framework, but of course, if you want to be competitive, you need to have skilled labor force, and if you don't have national labor force because aging and because the lower fertility rates, you need to open the doors unless you will decide to reduce your potential growth and to base only your possibilities to growth on productivity, but nobody can imagine that all the countries at the same time can be the number one in productivity terms to be more competitive. Now we'll take questions from the audience, right here in the front row. If you could have a microphone. Let's see, they're on their way. Thank you very much. A very essential part of the European social model was the existence and the success of social dialogue, meaning that social partners were in constant contact and allowing not only the development but also reform of the European social model. And I'm missing in this debate the question of what importance would the social dialogue should have in the future, particularly if it's necessary to develop various forms of the European social dialogue. Take one question over here. Well, I believe I was first. You don't see me and I'm in dark. I'll take you next, sir. Actually, I was calling on the gentleman here. Hello, I'm an old Algerian minister of social protection. And the peculiarity is that as a researcher, I was involved in a work on marginality on the cities in the Algerian periphery. And so at the time, I had developed a new approach to reducing poverty, which was adopted by a certain multilateral institution and adopted by a certain number of countries. Obviously, it gave me an experience and it gave me the ability to take a different look and to raise a certain number of important concerns that I'm going to share with you, especially when I look at it because I'm often often asked by my European friends to bring an external look, especially when we are also concerned by the historical flows of immigration of the population or recent immigration. So, the feeling, first, I'm going to proceed pedagogically with a slight provocation. The feeling is that countries that have a great capacity for expertise, that have an old age in management and the fluidity of the public service, are made in the same way as recent countries underdeveloped with governance problems. In one, the Bidens-Villes-Prolifères and in the other, there is great difficulty in managing the suburbs. And so the feeling, a little bit, is the question open? Is the social system, at the moment, in the political issues, is the question of financing not polarised and the debate on the one hand abusively? Secondly, is a large part of the problem not escaped? And I explain to myself, is the social security system, which is essential and around the presentation, which is essential around the world of work, the unemployment, the loss of work, the gain of work, the wrongdoings? Is the whole party linked to the new European social cartography, to the new population, the exclusion part, the marginality part, which poses among other issues of citizenship, which poses among other issues of communication, which poses among other issues of compatibility in terms of culture? In fact, invent new societies because it will be necessary for my European friends to realise that they are no longer the same, they are different? So, do they have to raise the challenge of the future by saying how this present which is already going to announce the future, how should I manage it? And moreover, you mentioned it, it is a part of national management, I am talking about European nationalities which may escape my efforts of development, we are looking for development, I need innovation, I need audacity, and it is not obvious that these marginalized people are unable to get involved in inventiveness, in audacity, etc. And so, should this great question not be inserted? Should the old mechanic who only cares about the performance, the health reimbursement, should it not be already obsolete? Shouldn't it come back to a fundamental concern how the social system should also have a dimension of responsibility on cohesion, on unity, on the performance of society, its future and its ability to innovate? Thank you. We'll take one more question over there before we begin answers. I'm Hans von Weizsäcker, I used to be a Member of Parliament. And at Parliament, I was Chairman of the Environment Committee and before that of the Globalisation Committee in which we also looked at the history of the European social model, finding, not surprisingly, that it was a child of the Cold War. It was necessary for the West to prove that the free market economy was better for the masses, not only for the rich than communism. This was the way of proving to Europeans and others that the free market economy can be good for all. This was actually coming from America. George Marshall, Dwight Eisenhower, or before Harry Truman, clearly said, we have to prove that the free market economy is good for all, not only for the rich. Well, and then, of course, as you know, in 1990 or so, communism collapsed under the conviction that the free market economy was better. And we found out that in the languages of the world, the term globalization emerged after 1990. And what did it mean? It meant the demise of the state, the weakening of the state, resulting in part, or mostly, by a competition for lower taxation in all countries. So that countries had no money any longer to finance justice, equity, social inclusion and all that. And now, our result in the commission was, if we want to maintain the high credibility of the free market economy, we better make it inclusive again. And give the money that is needed for that to the state because the free markets won't do it. Jean, I saw you nodding at several points during the question, so I'll let you start and then we'll see if there are others to chime in on that. Okay. On the social dialogue, let's be frank, it does not exist at European level. The commission is not very interested. Business Europe is a business lobby and unions are weak and divided and therefore, there's not really anything serious happening. So maybe it may change, but that's the situation now. Listening to you, I was also thinking, countries are extremely different in this respect. And even in countries where there is social dialogue, you can have very different roles. In Germany, you have a very defined responsibility for social dialogue. You have certain areas in which the government does not intervene. In my country in France, you have a confusion, an overlap of the role of the state and the role of social dialogue. So it's hard to move that to European level, although there were institutions put in place at the time of Jacques Delors, and they haven't been used for quite some time. I wanted to answer you too on the new risks. I am totally agree. We have left, we have built a system that was based on professionals and we tried to move the holes and then to deal with the risks that were badly dealt with by the professional approach. But we deal with them badly today. That is to say, there are both there are populations or individual paths that are badly dealt with by these risks that are not covered, or simply people do not accept the rights to which they have rights. In France, there are 8 billion rights that in principle should be translated by performance and not translated by performance because those who have rights do not demand it. So we have absolutely the problem that you are saying. And we have a concept of our system which is a too rigid concept, too inherited from a time when everything was built on a professional basis and we were in a full-fledged economy with a difficulty reaching the objectives. I think it's one of the great issues of social policies. Knowing that the policies that are specifically for the poor are also policies that are not necessarily effective because there is an effect of stigmatization that makes the poor turn or that it has negative effects. And in addition, they are poorly accepted by a middle class who like the state of Providence when it is the first beneficiary of the state of Providence. So a very, very difficult problem for all of us. Eve, you had some comments. I was struck by the analysis of Mr. Von Weitzsäcker that the welfare system was a child of the Cold War. The title of this session is wither the welfare system, the European model. We used to have the question often of wither NATO. Does the European, does the social welfare system have a future without the Cold War? And the line and answer to the questions, also the question from the Algerian colleague that we're discussing now the social European social welfare state here this morning in Monaco because of the crisis. But I think we have to be aware of the fact that Mr. Von Weitzsäcker made reference to the period when the system was built up and started, that even in times of quite important economic growth, even in times and countries where there is a substantive economic growth, also security systems since 25 to 30 years doesn't produce equality like it was meant to redistribute and produce equality, equality in income or even equality in chances. We issued not so long ago a report divided we stand about equality and the development in terms of income and in terms of the distribution of GDP per capita. And there you can see that even in terms of very important economic growth, economic success, progress and even in countries which have a egalitarian tradition like Sweden since 20, 25 years, in fact, there is a growing inequality. And I think there elements which have been put forward by the, par la collègue algérien sont très important. C'est, nous avons bâti un système de sécurité sociale les trois quatre piliers traditionnels avec un financement, je dirais, préconçu. But society has developed, has changed. And once again, I think we underestimate the element of the resilience, empowerment, asking people to take their own responsibility in terms of upscaling their skills, preparedness to go back to the labor market, have longer careers and so on. And so I think it's a question also of resilience and we have to even if there would in the next years be more economic growth and the problem of financing our social security system would be kind of resolved so to say even then we will have to look very carefully and very closely at the element of equality improving of the social security schemes which once again during the last 20, 25 years was in fact decreasing. I have to say we have quite a dynamic panel here where you can actually see people wrestling with the questions they're being asked. I commend you for that.  Yes, a couple of quick remarks. First of all, regarding the social dialogue at the European level. I remember during the 80s, 90s, during the Delor period there was a process of social dialogue at the European level. At the moment when not only the attitude regarding European integration was more positive than now but also at the moment when the EU institutions were able to adopt some kind of rules at the EU level on the social issues. This moment disappeared during the past decade and given that now it's practically impossible that the European Council and the Parliament will agree on common rules following the legislative decision making process, the social partners at the EU level don't find useful, interesting, don't find that this is a priority to really discuss new issues apart the different positions and the different priorities of business Europe on the one hand and the European Confederation of Trade Unions on the other. I think it's very unfortunate because, and I linked with the second part what I wanted to comment on the two other interventions, the welfare state or social models requires a lot of changes because the society has changed completely. The exclusion, 25% of the EU population is at the risk of exclusion according to figures that were released few days ago by Eurostat. This means that our social policies, our social budgets, our social policy instruments are not at all efficient. If you look at the percentage of social expenditure in the GDP of Europe, 29% is higher than the one existed before the crisis. Also released recently by Eurostat but inequalities have grown and exclusion is at very high levels. Even poverty levels in some of our member states are extremely high, very different within Europe but very high. So the welfare state, our social models regardless the differences between different countries are not as efficient as they were in the past and these require changes. These require new instruments, new approaches, new policy instruments to avoid exclusion, to avoid the lack of social mobility for one part of our population, to avoid these awful life conditions and working conditions in most of our industrialized areas or big urban agglomerations and all this. And this is not being discussed because during the last 15, 20 years until the crisis we were in a different approach. We were in an approach of light touch, no regulations, let the market go and this was the consequence of what happened at the end of the 80s with the end of the Cold War or with the end of the communist systems at the other side of the world. But now the financial crisis has changed again the way we are analyzing our societies but the policy discussion has not yet emerged. We are dealing with how to repair the financial system, how to solve the urgent awful consequences of the crisis but this discussion of what we need not to repeat the past mistakes and to have a sustainable, not only sustainable growth, sustainable society is not yet there and I think this is in my view an urgent discussion if we want to protect our citizens and if we want to have good arguments to protect our democracies because at the end is the democratic system that is at risk in the situation we are living now. Can I get a microphone over here to the distinguished gentleman in the front row Carl Kaiser and while the mic is coming I'll say I think one of the interesting aspects of this conversation has been the identification of the question, is it possible now to have a job and still live in poverty? It's a question we're beginning to debate in the United States as well, Carl. I would like to ask the panel whether the time hasn't come to make a courageous and in my opinion needed effort to deal with a growing problem namely the question of the pension system in Europe where I see a danger that the whole European model can get into real trouble. We know when it was said the age grows, that's a good thing but the working age should also rise, the pension age should rise but that's not happening. It's happening in some countries, other countries politicians have great problems in resisting the pressure to stay where we are. Now the signals are going in the opposite direction of what should be done. It started in France with the measures by President Hollande. The Grand Coalition in Berlin which we'll probably vote it in today with the referendum of the Social Democrats is giving another signal taking back the reforms of Gerhard Schröder lowering the age to 63. So my question is, isn't this a problem where we could do something at the European level to help the politicians to deal with the problem otherwise the system becomes unfinancible? And could you pass the mic back, Karl? I have a mic on French MP in charge of the UMP platform. In France we pay a lot of money for our social system and nonetheless it's rather inefficient with what we call the French preference towards unemployment. In that way part of the discussion, the start of the discussion was more or less on paying more as I got at the same time as some of us in France put the question of the new foundation of our social system. The discussion does not go on the question of harmonization or new European directions on the social system but the shared analysis of what does not work. There are things which obviously do not work particularly in our country. So the debate about spending more maybe because there's been the crisis is not ours. The question of more harmony in the social system in Europe may be one but it does not erase the fact that the fundamentals of our system in France do not work. And when we put the question as fundamentally as refoundation of the system, it looks very far from what you were talking about. For all those outsiders we do not help. The discussion of spending more money may be of interest but if we keep on the lines we've been keeping for so long they'll still be outsiders. And one more point. I know that when we speak about investment some academics will say education is part of investment. When we speak about social system academics may say education is part of the social system. I do acknowledge that the lot of money has to be spent on education and that it's sound and reasonable but I do not believe that extending all difficult issues to education does really help solve neither the education issue nor the social issue. Unless I see a hand with a burning question that we need to add, is it burning, sir? All right. And this will wrap it up. And if you could be succinct you'd earn my thanks and the thanks of everybody who wants to get to lunch. The issues you all have been talking about are not unusual in the United States. Washington State has a Boeing facility that might move to South Carolina. Our pension funds are at varying levels of insolvency and most of our states are welfare programs, attract or repel people around the country. All of them sound like they're probably an adventure in the European situation but in the United States I think we have found that the competition among the states on the type of rules they envision has created some degree of experimentation. Indiana has moved to solve their, or at least alleviate their pension fund problems. Illinois decided to go bankrupt as far as I can see. To what extent are you underrating the value of having individual nation states experiment with solving these various problems rather than trying to elevate it to the European situation? Didier, maybe you can wrap this up and talk about it. Maybe three short remarks. First, about pensions in general tempos, maybe more for the social issues. You don't have a misunderstanding. I fully agree that we need to go further with the social dialogue to have some minimum rules at the European level, I said. Also for the pensions, due to what? Because we need to go further with the single market. We need to do more with open trade with other parts of the world but to have the support of the population, we need to organize some minimum rules at the European level because except that we will have more and more protectionist approaches. So it's not a contradiction. We need some rules on social issues to be able to have a real single market. We are not so far in energy in other fields. We need to do more and also to have a real open trade with other parts of the world. The second element for pensions, we need to take the financing of the pension on board in the analysis of the sustainability of the public finances. For the moment, we are looking to the deficit, to the debt ratio, but we need to do more is beginning about the quality of the public finances and the quality of the public finances is also to see what kind of financing for the pensions. And of course, everywhere in Europe, we have the same discussions. How long is it needed to work? 65 as a good idea, maybe in the second world war because this was the life expectancy. So we didn't need to pay the pensions. The people had a good idea to die just at 65. But if you have now an expectancy for more than 80s, you need to find a way to another world. And so what kind of contributions were you on live? So there are a lot of discussions, but with maybe also some minimum rules at the open level. And the third remark, I just want to just come back to the question of our Algerian colleague because I don't understand and I'm not going to repeat what has been said about the inclusive character for those who today don't even have access to the minimum rights because they don't ask them. But behind the European approach, we are talking a lot in all of our innovation strategies. For a part of the population, it will obviously be the solution. But there is a part of the population that will not have the level of qualification to enter into these jobs, innovations and these new jobs. And so I really believe, and Jean was saying, education, but especially professional training is a major element in all of our societies. If we want a part of the population, and especially young people, and access to the work market, not in the new technologies, but in jobs, especially manual for which, for the moment, some countries, maybe the case in Germany, there are a lot of good activities, very good relations among the enterprises and the education system. But in my country, in Belgium, we are not doing enough about that. We need to go further to have a real qualification for part of the population without any access to the high-tech new jobs. So that's it. But again, some minimum rules in different social issues and also in pensions, it's quite important at the upper level, maybe some guidelines, some references. If we want to attract the population to support the open process, except that we will have more and more protectionist approaches. So it's lunchtime. Je vous remercie, monsieur, pour discussion très aimable. Très poc uton. Nous allons maintenant procéder à une déjuné, débat, et en reprends ici à 15 heures. Et là. On verra.


I don't think the pandemic is going anywhere. So would I invest in the hardest hit stocks by the pandemic? No, that wouldn't be my strategy. Hey, Frank. How are you? I'm doing fantastic. How are you? I'm pretty good today. Yeah, I would say so. I would say- I think I'm okay. Everybody quoting Frank saying, everyone's been quoting you all week saying, Frank did say to put on your seatbelt. Remember that quote? Yeah, unless you want to fall out of a rocket. Yeah, I mean, you know. Well, let's just talk about this news. It's been a fun day.  Let's read the headline here. Universal PropTech Inc Investing and Secures Defined Agency Rights for ISBRG Corp. Spotlight 19 technology designed to detect COVID-19 non-invasively in under one minute. Wow. I've never heard of anything like it. I've heard of 15-minute test results. You know, I've heard of five-minute, 10-minute. I've never heard of one minute. That's big. You know, Rich, that's what really excited us was the ability to open the economy, to get people into buildings, right?  Maybe I can do a 15-minute test before. No, no, we're talking about getting schools, any facility, restaurants, arenas open. This is it. And that's obviously what attracted us to the opportunity. It's absolutely incredible. It's absolutely incredible. Okay, it's under a minute, but under one minute. Under a minute. So can you explain exactly how it works? It's a fingertip with a light and they test it with an image. You know, so I'll give you an example, right? So I'm going to leave ISBRG, is how they pronounce it. I'll leave ISBRG in a few days or so, really sort of come out of their shell and really explain who and what and who they're with. Then, you know, we're really excited because obviously being publicly traded, we have a disclosure and we have to ultimately come out, but it's quite exciting. So we're really looking forward to that. But let me give you an example, right? Of what's possible and how it works, right? If you have a new Apple Watch, the light's very different. But if you have a new Apple Watch, Apple Watch is now able to see your oxygen level within your blood. So the point being, and that's a very simplistic element of it, but the point being that using a particular beam of light to understand what is in your bloodstream and then to use as states in the press release, artificial intelligence to ultimately detect, is it this, is it that?  It's tremendous. I mean, do you know that 70% of all global, of all visits to a doctor globally, right? So 70% of them result in a blood test. Think about that, right? So you go see a doctor and they say, okay, go do a blood test, we'll figure out what's wrong with you. So just imagine the possibilities of what you're able to do now in under a minute for really anything.  And again, for us, COVID is pretty important because here we are coming out with our plan of, you're not getting enough facility if you've got COVID. And when you're inside of it, we're cleaning the air, cleaning the services and then validating it. This is a pretty good talk. Absolutely changing. It's an absolute game changer. We've got investors in our community that are super excited about UPI, super excited about what you guys are doing. When the news came out today, we were spreading it around in our community and everyone's celebrating. Everyone's celebrating. And obviously the stock was halted yesterday. So a lot of people are like, you know, what's going on? Why are they halted? And I was trying to explain to people, I'm like, well, well, can you explain why you guys halted the stock? Well, I mean, there's a, you know, as paperwork and things are moving, there's a timeframe difference of when we know we're closing a deal of when it actually physically closes, which it closes this morning. You know, there's just too much risk of people who know this, it getting out. And we didn't think we ready right at opening which we weren't. So we wanted to make sure we protected obviously all the shareholders and make sure and all the investors that they get the proper information together and they can do what they want to do and look what happened at 1215, I think over 700,000 shares, 775,000 to be exact, traded within that first minute. So that's how it works, right? You halted because we do have permanent information and as it came out, people were left it on it. So yeah, we're pleased with that. It's absolutely crazy. It's absolutely crazy. And I have so many questions coming from members. Please Rich, go away, ask the questions. I'm really excited. I wanna answer what I can answer today. So let's look at it. Sure, so let's go through some of your guys' questions. And if you guys have questions, please put them in the chat now. I know a lot of you guys are wondering, is it too late to get in and you know, and I know that Frank is gonna say that this is just the first inning, right? Like, this is not done. It ain't done, right Frank? You're just getting started here, right? We're not done. You guys not done guys. So first question, does UPI intend to offer financial services to potential landlords? Good question. So outside of COVID and other stuff, I would say, I mean, it's not something we're going to do in the next two weeks, but absolutely when you look at what I've discussed as the business model of, you know, we've got our air quality COVID related equipment, our building performance, mechanical controls and our energy resources, absolutely. At some point, and it's hard to say when, but at some point in that mix, it would be proven for us to be part of this growing global demand for alternate asset class and to be able to offer financing, either whether we own the assets or whether we finance the assets, absolutely needs to be part of it. And it's just really a question as to when in our timing of our growth of that plays out, certainly the conversations we've had, but obviously we can't say what definitive day that that's something that's gonna happen, but a hundred percent, that's something that at some point will happen. That's Frank's idea. We'd be missing a huge opportunity if we didn't do it. Absolutely, because not everybody's going to be able to do it, so if they can do some type of monthly financing, that will be something that will be able to open up. From a customer perspective, yes, but even more so, I mean, having done, I've done some significant utility transactions in the marketplace and other energy services companies. And I can tell you the markets and businesses really appreciate that alternate asset class, right? That long-term coupon clipping attached to an asset and obviously credit worthiness is critical, but what that does when we start getting to the point where we're beyond speculators and we're beyond people thinking, where's this gonna end up? But we're now a well-humming machine of revenue and earnings. The publicly traded companies in the utility space or similar, they were selling it over 20 times earnings because of that alternate asset class space. So if you sort of look at where you need to go, I think it'd be prudent to look at how you build in that value with multiples on that alternate asset class. I have a question from Emmer. This is directly to you, Frank. How does growth look like for UPI in 2021? So our fiscal year end is the end of August. This being a good example of, I think we're looking at a few months, give or take some period for this to start rolling out. So from a revenue perspective, just for obvious reasons, I don't think this will naturally roll out and close out in this fiscal year, but from everything else we're working on, there's things that we're pulling in from a revenue perspective and it will have its impact and I'm quite excited. And when Chris, our CEO is ready to start doing more projections and giving some targets, we'll do that from an iceberg perspective and spotlight 19, for the end of the calendar year, I think will be a tremendous impact. It's just, we need to wait for the final approvals on it and we'll go to town on it, but there's no delay on our part. We'll go as soon as we can go. In fact, we're already getting messages of people saying, can I get one when it's ready? So we're pretty excited. Yeah, I saw that in the press release, you actually have a link for people to order, that order form, I thought that was brilliant. Well, I mean, it's smart on our part. We're the sales agent serving for a pretty big chunk of the Canadian landscape and it'd be smart for us to be able to attract people who are expressing an interest, don't know where to go, what to do to say we're interested and we wanted to make sure we did that and I think it worked well so far. And second to that, we're not gonna wait until, here's the final, say, Health Canada approval before we start generating sales leads. Are you kidding? We'll be doing that fairly quickly and lockdown organizations who express an interest pending approval. So we're definitely on it. That's fantastic. I have a question for you. But again, I mean, part of that question, I didn't jump back into this business to say a $10 million a year business, so just saying. Yeah, and $10 million is good too, it's good business but that's the start of UPI. This is a company that was doing $10 million a year when they went public and now with these acquisitions and all the new business that is being generated, I think that we're going to be looking more like in the future maybe, and I don't want to speak for you but maybe a $100 million company. So that would be 10 times growth revenue. Oh, you know, I said it last time, I don't know why you aim so low, but sure. And I'm being conservative.  We're being conservative, but I like to do it in stages, right? First we go for a hundred million, then we go to a billion, right? Yep, a hundred percent. I have a question. What else you got? Yes, I have a question from Nathan Cook and just do your best to answer some of these questions because everybody wants all the answers. But just do your best and don't put yourself in any trouble. What is the big catalyst you expect to hear from UPI and where do you see the stock price heading? I mean, the big catalyst, we're putting in all the pieces to a puzzle that we know we could sell that the market wants and the market needs and we're putting them all together. So, I've seen a lot of companies that can have great solutions but unless the marketplace is ready to buy it unless a customer is saying, I need that today, you can just be waiting for years until there's churn, renewal and people buy it from you. So, with everything we have and I think Iceberg fits in beautifully where Spotlight 19 would be a natural catalyst of driving, I mean, again, we're in Eastern Canada, Ontario to the East Coast. Overnight, Spotlight 19 allows us to have access aggressively to across the country, all the government facilities, all the education facilities and we would, you know, it's in our best interest to then do a pull through of everything else we can pull through on the back of that. So, obviously COVID related things are critical catalysts. I mean, it's been here for a while that we're all dealing with. We have a great bunch of solutions and services to get in the door with at the moment. I think we'll do a great job shortly to show the prove that out and then Spotlight 19 is ultimately just gonna, you know, just let it take off from a regional geographical perspective. But we have those catalysts and we're not done, we're not stopping, why would we? So, our plan is to continue to bring them in and then spit them out and generate the revenue and the growth. So, we're well on our way. I have a question from, oh, wow, they're coming in quickly. Sanyok 30 says, does the COVID-19 detection tech require health Canada approval? Yeah, so part of what we're actually funding, right? So this is, we'll wait for iceberg to come out with their announcements and their details. But part of this, and we refer to it in the press release is to help, if you would calibrate the sensitivity of it and then there is absolutely a health Canada application unless something goes awfully wrong, which why would it? To this point, we've done our homework. At some point in the coming months, there would be an opportunity to have that approval. So, iceberg will come up with those details in days or so. Absolutely, that's the intent behind it and it would be not by minutes or 30 seconds, it would be by multiples better than from a timing and efficiency perspective and a cost perspective of what's out there in the marketplace. So we're pretty excited. Wow, that's incredible. I mean, what do you have that's, yeah, so what do you have? Like, there's all these companies coming out with all the stuff in that or nowhere. You know, great. You can't tell what's something better than everybody else. It's, I think COVID generates some interesting opportunities for people to really sort of pivot. And obviously, you know, I think COVID wasn't clearly the first one up. And I think iceberg's done a great job to take the lead on, hey, you know, this is COVID, let's pivot a bit. So we're really excited even beyond COVID of what these guys are gonna be able to do and are doing. So, and if you really understand artificial intelligence, you'll get, my God, where does this end? What can you do? And so that part is also exciting. And I'll even say, look, we're universal PROCTEC, right? What we've done here is this is like the quintessential, like it's a poster child type of investment you wanna have when you're talking about PROCTEC because it's about access to a facility and limiting it and managing who gets access to a facility. If there are carriers of COVID and they don't even know it, we're gonna capture that. So from that perspective, using AI, machine learning in a facility, with everything else we're doing with facilities, it's like the ideal investment opportunity we could have found that really encapsulates everything we're trying to do with facilities. We're really excited. And here we are creating a healthy building environment. So it's perfect for what we were trying to achieve. Fantastic. Roy asks, what's the market cap you are targeting in two years, both optimistic and pessimistic? There's so many moving parts to what we're building right now. If I had a $100 million mature business that had a great growth plan and we just took it over, that's one thing. I might be able to say the type of growth trajectory, it's a starter kit. We started with $10 million a year. We're adding on things that they haven't done in decades. We're adding on an actual sales force which they haven't done in decades. And that's effectively what we're doing. So it's really hard to say where it's gonna stop. There's no shortage of technologies we're looking at. There's no shortage of acquisition targets we're looking at. So I think it's really hard to say where we're going to be. But again, everything we're touching is to be improved margins, tremendous growth and revenues and earnings. So when the dust settles, we'll probably turn more into caretakers and we can walk through what we've achieved we're not even close to understanding where the edge of our universe is going right now. Yeah, it's too way too early to talk about that. But from where we're gonna go from a stock perspective, I think as I still think we're in my humble opinion that we're undervalued for what it is we're viewing. We're getting there. People are appreciating it. Obviously today the churn of our stock is a good sign of people paying attention and buying into it. But we've just started. We're a quarter in to what we were trying to achieve here. So I think we've got a great amount of space to really prove to people what we're able to do. And as long as people keep watching and paying attention, I think they'll be excited with our store. Questions are coming in fast and furious now. Thank you guys and keep ringing them. This is from Phil Kan. Thank you Phil for the question. Do you have a method of killing the virus example UV light? Yes, so we have two product lines that use germicidal UV light. Air Sniper is a Canadian manufacturer out of Edmonton. So we're really excited. We are the exclusive master distributor of their products from Ontario to East Coast. And then we have Fresh Air UV, which another UV, germicidal UV product line. So we have two different ones we can use and they have both in duct or in room. So we are really excited about the UV solutions we have right now. Great. From Raheel Jalani, what are the company's objectives for the next two to four weeks? Oh, Raheel, you're really honest. You know, what are the objectives? Well, we're not gonna rest. So that's one is don't rest. No, so we've, there's a lot of work. Today was a great day to make this announcement because obviously we had to once we signed the deal, but we're not stopping. So there's a lot to do on this alone. There's a lot to do on the things we've already brought in. So there's a lot of effort on putting together our brochures, our approaches to existing clients and new prospects with our COVID air quality package that we've been putting together.  So that's gonna be rolling out shortly. So that's, we're busy on that. We're busy doing walkthroughs and bringing in new prospects already. And we've got, again, we're not stopping with this. We have a whole bunch of other solutions and services that we're looking at as other investment targets or strategic licenses. So again, it's gonna be busy. And we're not slowing down here.  I mean, I don't even think a lot of the investors that have seen the growth expected it to be this quick. It was almost overnight. I mean, it seems like just yesterday, you were on our show, the stock was under 30 cents. And we're like, oh, you know, it's probably a good buying opportunity. We were talking about an overhang.  You know, eventually they'll sell. And now the stocks at 70 cents. It's like that was, seems like a year ago, but it was like a week ago. And within so much, the stocks doubled in price, more than doubled in price. You doubled your market cap, you've got new products. You're right, the part of the challenge is people wanna put us in a certain bucket. And just because our starter kit happens to be a building controls and a mechanical services company doesn't mean that we're living within those lanes.   That's all I'm interested in. We were having conversations about what keeps you up at night? How do we increase the value in your buildings and your assets? I mean, if we go to apartment reach tomorrow as an example, for every million dollars, we can save them an energy efficiency cost and reduction or even generate a new revenues for them because we can build energy systems, let's say. For every million dollars we save them, it's worth 25 million in enterprise value because of their cap rates right now. So it's really having a good understanding of what the value is we provide. We're not thinking and acting like, say a typical mechanical and controls business. That's what they did for 40 years. We're acting like people who are building a full service one stop shop energy management company. We're building healthy buildings and everything that comes with it. So it's hard for people to look at us and understand where do they stop? Good. I don't want people to think they can understand that. So we're going to continue to build value in growth and just hang on. I'm loving what you guys are doing. It's really exciting. And I can tell with the amount of questions that there's a lot of excited investors here. Good, I'll be quicker. I want to hear more questions just to be quick. Oh, it's okay. You don't have to be quick. Just keep doing what you're doing. It's great. Raheel says, another question from Raheel. What is the strategy to combine all the pieces such as COVID air sniper and plus today's news? So, I mean, that's it. It's to combine them all. I mean, with the, with iceberg and spotlight 19, it's obviously going to take a bit longer but it's still conversations we can have with customers, right? About what we intend to do in the coming months. So the package is simple, right? Right now what you're seeing out there is the Wild West. I said this before. And in the Wild West, everyone are pitching what they think is the best, you know, UV product, the best ionization product. They're just pitching a particular product.  Oh, you school board, you need this one product. Really? That's not how these things work. You don't walk into every single facility and say, I have the perfect solution for you. You don't understand their situation. So being in this business for 40 years, we have a good understanding of every school, every building, every facility is quite unique. And where they are in, it might be that their HVAC system is so old that even if you wanted to run through a better air quality, their ventilation system can't take it. It's already decrepit and it should be replaced now. So every situation has its own unique dynamics of their system can't take it. We're gonna have to do in room and this is how we configure it. And then depending on the size of the rooms, depending on, you know, what is being designed to accommodate it, we then figure out in our bag of tricks of which products make the most sense for that. So we cannot walk into every situation and say, oh, we know exactly what you need before you knew it. Or before, you know, we even walked into the place. We cannot do that. And so having these pieces of air sniper, fresh air, UV, atmosphere is critical. And then adding in the piece of, oh, by the way, we're so confident in what we're designing for you as a package that we will, as part of it, we will wipe down any room that has a COVID positive person, you know, within hours we'll be called in, we'll do a truck roll. We will wipe down every room, swab it with our test kits and be able to identify in less than two hours if COVID is present on any surface of that individual's been near. That's great validation, great ability for us to say, you know, our system's working. And we've given comfort to people who use that space that there's nothing left of COVID in that space. And then, you know, you couple that in again with, and that's a service, you couple that in with, with spotlight 19, just you're giving peace of mind.  We're talking about creating a peace of mind, a very customer-centric approach where the trusted advisor, and we're always gonna do what makes sense for you and your facilities and the story.  What product don't I need? They're gonna sell me. That's not us. And that's not the way we're going to market. So Raheel, it's a great question. We have all these products make sense. And if someone wants us in the door on one product and one solution set, we still have everything else we can pull through that we hope to do with them before we're done. So we think we've got a good approach. Come on, Rich, what do you got? From Tyreel, to my understanding, this technology was used previously in attempt to detect THC. Since there is an existing architecture, does this mean it just needs to be repurposed for COVID-19? So attempted, attempted is an interesting word. So definitely they can detect various state of health within your blood. They can absolutely detect that. So if you understand AI, it's really just a question up. So anyone who's looked at machine learning, how do you tell it what to do going forward? So how the way, how machine learning works is, it looks at what you're currently doing today. So here we are using a PCR test that says it in here. We take the best thing that people are using today as a PCR test, which could take several hours to days to get the results back in, right? And we say, let's teach it to understand machine learning that when you do a PCR test and we run a concurrent assessment of our tool, we're able to start identifying, oh, you're positive, we tell our solution for that snapshot of your blood, it's positive. And as we measure enough of them over a period of time and we feed it enough information, it's able to understand, I think I can now tell who is positive and who isn't of any virus, of any thing you program at four. So if I wanted to find out if you have the flu, and now it's flu season, and I'm making sure people don't go into senior's homes or certain places with the flu, because they probably don't know they have it, then I just have to run my algorithms and run my assessment for all those different viruses and all those different, all those situations that could appear in your blood, if I run enough analysis of them, I teach my machine learning how to identify it in several seconds. That's, I mean, that's AI, that's how it works. And so it's going to radically change. I mean, you said game changer earlier, it's going to radically change how you start assessing state of health of people. And I'll let icebergs do its thing when they come out and talk about what they're up to. And we're just excited that beyond COVID, we've got an opportunity to continue to market and sell services beyond just COVID. So we're looking at the longevity of this as well. This is a question from Phil Kahn regarding the UV light method of killing the virus. Is there sales in the pipeline or does it need health Canada approval first? No, so from the UV perspective, all of our products that we're currently selling and have the rights to are all approved in Canada. So right now where we're at and there are conversations happening with customers and scoping out opportunities and we have staff who are doing that. It's really, you know, we've got all these different tools in our toolkit. It's really making sure how best to position it to go to market and then scale it. So it's a bit of you're testing it, your focus group testing it. Do we have the right package? How do we price it? How do we, what terms we want attached to this? And we go out. And I think I said on your show last week, we'll be out shortly with an executed plan to scale this. But all of our products have approval other than spotlight 19, which we'll go through it shortly. All of the other products have approval. Question from Andrea. What about using portable UV lights to sanitize rooms and areas? Or does that exist already? Yeah, so all these solutions do exist. There are portable units. There are different ways you can do it. There's systems, some that we're not using, but there's systems where you can literally put in a room, get people out of it, turn it on remotely, and it will clear the room. The challenges with that are, so it's a different level of, different nanometer level of the UV range. And the problem is additional ranges of that aren't for human consumption, if you would. So that's why some people, I've talked to one senior cell operator who after someone has had COVID and they clear that room, they literally will put in a device, close the door, remotely turn it on for say an hour or so. I can't remember the exact timing. And it will, wherever the light can catch in that room, the UV light would kill any pathogens, viruses present. Again, okay, are you making sure that no one is entering the room or you're making sure there's no cats around? There's a lot of complexity. And so every time you walk into a situation, we think of what device, devices make sense and what design and what protocol for this facility. And that's what we execute. You can't just buy stuff off the shelf and say, I'll make this fit, not gonna happen. There was a question actually from one of our members and it was a really good one. So you guys are going to sanitize and clean these rooms and make sure that there's no COVID. How do you do that?  Like, how does that go? So there's a few things, right? So there's two different things. From an air quality perspective, if you're the way, so UV is gonna work from in many respects as other, a lot of UV solutions have other, you know, there's one competitor who has a hydrogen peroxide sort of leave behind, right? Which I'm exactly a fan on because hydrogen peroxide when you apply it onto a surface, it bubbles after a few seconds. At some point you wipe it down. Yeah, that's not for human consumption. So the idea is really, depending on the facility and what you're looking at, we wanna use the air quality we're putting at whether it's ionization. So ionization has the ability to attach itself, these ions, two particles, two VOCs, two pathogens in the air as the air is traveling and effectively clean the air. And if you clean that, then it means, well, none of that can land on a surface, right? So there's ways you approach this. Each situation is a little different. It doesn't take away that every place is probably going to have its own cleaning disinfection protocol beyond, you know, those janitors and people with cleaning protocols. That combination is probably gonna be what ends up working for most organizations, certainly most governmental organizations. You won't not clean a room with proper chemicals and materials. It's just you don't want the air to be the reason why you're contaminating the room. And so we're focusing on cleaning the air.  UV works differently in that as the air is passing through the UV rays, that's where the vast majority of the effort is to kill anything that's in that air. So if you're doing it there, so think of it as we can make sure the room has clean air, that if someone gets in the room who's COVID positive and they're now spreading it with their droplets, that's something you then have to worry about. So what you do to the air and what your cleaning protocol has to be part of the mix when you determine these things. So we're not, we're not, hey, we're in the technology business, we're not part of cleaners running around and wiping. We're certainly helped there to validate and have crews that would go around and do surface testing to verify that COVID's present or not. And that's something that we have now with Lumen Ultra. But from a cleaning process perspective, not interested in getting in the cleaning product business, there are protocols that exist, we can have a validate if they're working or not and we can have validate if the air system is contributing or if it's assisting in destroying COVID. So there's just places we play in it. You have more time for a few more questions? Yeah, absolutely. Okay, cool. So this is from Sanyok 30. You have a very impressive advisory board. Can you talk briefly about the individuals and what they bring to the table, specifically with rolling out new tech? Yeah, so that's a great point, great question. And we appreciate that. So the advisory board is intended to grow as we move along and bring in additional, right, additional technology sets, additional targets and approaches will make sure that that advisory board continues to sort of support our growth in those areas, right? So again, we're taking a footprint of a mechanical controls business and we're adding on layers that it itself doesn't have certain skill sets in. So we're making sure we offset that. So Adam Suarez, previous board member who's now turned to be an advisor, you know, he's a lawyer of Foglers, Foglers is a great job and our legal work, he's the chairman of Foundation Markets or one of the founders of Foundation Markets. So, you know, he brings a lot of great expertise as we're looking at deals and transactions. So we wanted that, you know, we're looking at new things that haven't been done before, i.e spotlight. And so we wanna make sure we have the right eyes on, we know our appetite, we know we're interested in, but we always wanna make sure we're de-risking it and having the right people at the table assisting us. So Adam Suarez is amazing for that. And Bob Daniels is someone I've known for a long time. They've developed other than the family being tremendous developers of, you know, all kinds of residential multi-res and multi-use projects over the decades. Bob's built the largest wind farm in the province and supported him with that. So they're very active, the family is, and he's very active in everything from obviously commercial development and commercial buildings. And he's developed himself personally, multi-res and single family homes over the decades.  It's smart to have smart people like him around who can help add value to some of the deals we're looking at. And then a new people we're looking at as well. There's a lot of value they'll add to help offset many perceived weaknesses, certainly internally, externally to help make sure that we're looking at everything we need to be looking at. And absolutely we have intentions of expanding the advisory board where we can and are actively looking at that. So it's just gonna continue to get stronger, better, more diverse and we're working on all that. From Sean Mack, do you have any kind of estimates on price points for commercial sale of these products as individuals or package? Yeah, you know, part of the challenge is we're talking about larger venues, right? So we're talking about, you know, if you're looking at that airport, it's border crossing, if you're looking at larger applications of it, it's challenging, right? So the part of it is I won't steal Iceberg's funder on this. Iceberg and Thunder, pardon me, that's kind of funny. But I mean, I won't steal their funder on it. But, you know, part of the challenge becomes if you're dealing with an organization that is charging a ticket, charging a price for people to pass through a door, then it's far easier, like, you know, if you've been to Vegas, it's far easier to say, oh, there's an infrastructure tax, right? This is what we're gonna attach to your cost. And so it's easier in those situations to apply it to maybe a user fee, far more in a user fee, in addition to say a licensing fee, an annual licensing fee. So every application needs to be a little different. I don't think the intention would be, gee, we're gonna have that school and Johnny is gonna go through that door every day at the same time. Does that make sense that we're gonna charge Johnny a per user fee or to the school board might not be the application. So, you know, we have that leeway, the elasticity to understand what, you know, their ability to pay and how that works. And then the other question to ask you back would be, you know, if I can go get a school board tomorrow and get 500 schools that want to install multiple units per school, that's a little different. Right now you're talking about bulk orders, longer-term arrangements. Should there be an advantage for finding something like that than someone who maybe has a restaurant who wants one unit at the door? So, you know, I'm not gonna, you know, get ahead of iceberg, but clearly there's a lot to understand of how we go to market with something that no one's done before. But absolutely our intention is to scale, scale hard, scale fast, get as many organizations on board. And for the verticals we have, we're talking about tremendous amount of scalability in it. We're not talking about a lot of one-offs here. So price points will be related to that. Great. Okay, let's see here. This is from LA. There are a lot of talk about exclusive sales out East. Does UPI have penetration in Western Canada? So, I mean, in all of our product lines, the exclusivity we have, it's for Eastern Canada, for when we have exclusivity, nothing of any of our licensing arrangements agreement preclude us from doing sales at West. And certainly from a growth perspective, you know, nothing to make people aware of today. Certainly there's an objective to, as we continue to build our base of what it is we have to look, obviously to look at growth plan to graphic. So, you know, there could be opportunities where we can scale that in certain ways, but to just take the obvious spotlight 19 is a great opportunity to walk into facilities well beyond Eastern Canada. And that's all of Western Canada as well. So maybe just to add a bit of color as well. So yes, we are a mechanical and a controlled business to start. And yes, we're expanding these areas. You know, I've been in this industry for over 20 years. And for a good chunk of that, I generated deals with government across the country for a whole gambit of energy utilities, you name it. So my ability to walk into mayor's offices or, you know, former premiers, you know, there's a great ability to walk in a cost of country with the skill sets we have, then just what comes out of our VCI controls business today. So I'm really looking forward to using those contacts well to generate those deals and really pull through all the work we can pull through. I can't even imagine what's going to happen here. It's so exciting to think about the potential and the fact that you guys are just getting started. One of my clients, this is from BK. One of my clients has a gadget attached to his furnace. And I think he mentioned the words UV when explaining it to me. And he specifically has to disinfect the air circulating in his home for COVID. This is a great idea for you to work. Yeah. And then he finished saying, this is a great idea for huge buildings of any sort. Time to deploy some capital if this pulls back a little. So he's saying that he's thinking about buying the stock as a little bit of a pullback. Yeah. Look, I'll say this. I mean, there are technologies out there. I think early on when I started again a few months ago, we were really looking at are there key technologies we can acquire over things we can do right away? And I think we really sort of resolved ourselves in the fact of speed is everything, right? We can't just take our time and maybe build something new. There's enough technology out there. And one thing we concluded is that it's better and smarter to be the trusted advisor to a building owner than to sell the one product. Okay. So, all these products, UV ionization, everything that we're obviously going to go to them with, we brought in what we can. We brought in what makes sense to give us a good package to be able to provide it. But to state the other obvious too, is air quality was always the bottom of the barrel when it came to, if you owned a building commercial or even a multi rest, say you're a apartment owner, apartment building owner, air quality is not something that would have been at the top of your list. You don't want it to be a problem where people don't want to come in, there's odors or too much negative air pressure and things causing issues. What COVID did, and I think it's not going away, is COVID absolutely changed the prioritization of some of the expenditures going forward. So, if you wonder why we're putting a lot of our effort to date into the COVID air quality space, it's for that obvious reason. Money is being spent, whether it's governmental money or organizations, if you own a building and you want your tenants to come back and their leases are coming due. They absolutely will start looking at, okay, that building over there is they have ionization, they have clean air, they have a system that turns on additional filters when these conditions exist. Air quality will be another major determinant of where you choose to set up shop, if you're gonna be setting up shop anywhere outside of your home again. So these are things that are gonna come into play and air quality and those types of systems will be critical. That's not stopping, that's not going away anytime soon. And even when you do boilers or chiller retrofits, you have to wait for people, for their units to come due and to need renewal. But right now, no one's waiting for anything to come due. They're making expenditures on how the hell they clean their air. So that's gonna continue to happen. I have a question from Carol. Any government funding applied for or coming down the pipeline? For what particularly are you referring to? Just for all the different projects you guys have, I'm sure there's gonna be some government subsidies coming your way. You know what, I think we're absolutely sure. I mean, we're absolutely, so if we're not inventing it, so generally there's a lot of subsidies, a lot of opportunities, if you're the inventor of a technology and you're looking at various credits, shred credits, things like that for that, absolutely. I mean, our business has always had a number of shred credits for the R&D we've put into our own technology within BCI Controls. So that we've always had some elements of R&D. You know, and as we apply for projects, you know, it's kind of interesting if you apply for a school board or you're going after a project with another building. Absolutely in the equation, there are incentive dollars. We're always making applications for whether it's driven by the clients themselves or driven by us. So 100% that has to be part of it. There's enough incentives out there to drive a lot of the sales we're looking to do, but it's not the only determinant. We don't wanna be stuck in a business that's reliant on those types of incentives to make it work. That's not something you wanna grow a business on the backup. We're aware of that. And then, you know, when we get into things like alternate asset classes, you've asked earlier, you know, and when you get into, are there ways of having revenue sources on owning assets or financing assets and things like that? There's the other obvious is to a flow-through credits, right? The CRC credits from the federal government. You know, if it's out there, we're looking at it and we're making sure we apply it. We need to make sure we're giving the best value possible to the end customer. Whether that means, hey, we get to have quicker write-downs or more incentives or even renowned credits. It just means that their payback is quicker or all of us make more money and save more money. And that's to the benefit of the customer. So we're pretty excited about that. One more question, because I know it's getting pretty late. We've been live for about 45 minutes now and we wanna make sure that everyone gets a chance to see this video. If, well, I'm gonna ask it like this because I've already asked this. Go for it, yeah. They want the U.S. and the U.S. listing and a Frankfurt listing. Any updates on either? Yeah, I mean, it's, hey, we've heard people, right? We're doing what we need to do. And I think at the appropriate time to announce it, you know, Chris, our CEO will announce what he needs to announce, but we've definitely heard people, you know, we've just made an investment today into a global solution. So not lost on me that at this point, you know, there are certainly icebergs out there, but at this point, they're not publicly traded. We are. So I think it's just prudent for us to look at things beyond our borders and whenever it's the appropriate time, we will let people know. And I promise you guys, for those of you guys that are watching, you will be the first ones to know. I promise you that. Because Frank is always coming on our show and breaking all the news first for us. So thank you so much once again, Frank, congratulations on all your success so far. I know this is just the beginning. And I think most of our guys got their seatbelts locked in. Yeah, now you got to close the window because if you don't close it, you'll lose the oxygen soon as we get higher. So like it's exciting. I appreciate, I appreciate obviously being on your show. So thank you very much. Hey, always a pleasure, Frank. Love to have you on the show. Congratulations on all your success. Thank you guys for watching. If you're not winning, you're not watching. Remember, Rich TV Live is strictly for education and entertainment purposes. Always do your due diligence, always do your research before you invest in anything that we talk about on Rich TV Live. Consult a financial advisor. Chances are if you talk to your financial advisor, they're gonna say, hmm, UPI looks good. I know that's what I said when I saw it the first time. And I'm pretty sure that's what our entire community said when they saw it under 30 cents. And today we've seen this rocket run well over 70 cents. I don't know what it finished at, like 67 or something, 66, 67. Either way, that's well over 100% since we started first talking. And I would love to invite you back, Frank, anytime you'd like to do either question and answers, just answer questions like this, talking about big breaking news, always a pleasure. And I'm always learning more about universal prop tech and about this industry and about your technology every time you come on the show. So thank you so much for literally being an open book for myself and the entire community. Oh, anytime. Thank you very much. And honestly, onwards and upwards, keep talking. Thank you, Frank. Thank you guys for watching. Have a nice day, everybody. UPI, put it on your watch list, put it on your radar. Guys, if you like this video, smash the like button, comment down below, share the video everywhere, and subscribe. Have a nice day, everybody. Thanks, Frank. We'll see you later.


Now, shaking hands in front of a grand Geneva villa, US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin had begun their first summit since Biden took office, were deep disagreements likely and expectations of solving them low. Both have said they hope their talks can lead to a more stable and predictable relations, even though there are at odds over everything from arms control in cyber-hiking to election interference in Ukraine. Relations have been deteriorating for years, notably with Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine at 2015 intervention in Moscow of meddling in the 2016 election that brought Donald Trump to the White House.