The World Economic Forum – a global think tank targeted in numerous conspiracy theories alleging elites are plotting to impose their agenda on the planet – has been a political flashpoint in Canada. Opposition politicians question any links or agreements between the WEF and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government. Ontario Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis – a staunch WEF critic – announced on Twitter on , and again in a video posted on , that she had discovered the government of Canada secretly signed a deal more than two years earlier with the WEF titled the Agile Nations Charter. This is misleading. While the government did sign the deal, it was not kept secret from the public.
The Jan. 28 tweet linked to a 25-minute address, which discussed how she uncovered the deal through written answers to questions she submitted to the government on Oct. 21. In her Jan. 18 post, she supplied a link to the .
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The Agile Nations Charter was signed on Nov. 25, 2020, by seven countries: Canada, Italy, Singapore, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Japan and Denmark. Its aim was to brainstorm ways to streamline and modernize rules and regulations in emerging technology fields such as medicine and business via a series of projects. Global companies such as Siemens and IBM would also participate and the projects would be observed by the WEF and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Participation is voluntary and the charter itself is .
The Agile Nations Charter was officially announced on Dec. 9, 2020, by the , the and . The of the link from the ɫtv government is from Dec. 15, 2020.
The OECD link includes video comments from representatives of the countries and businesses involved, including Jean-Yves Duclos, who was at the time Canada’s president of the Treasury Board.
In the months that followed there have been updates on progress and the projects undertaken, including an update by the ɫtv government on which was captured two months later on the .
Lewis's video
Lewis, in her YouTube video, said she "got wind" of the Agile Nations Charter through legal articles and in references from the Trudeau government, then sought to confirm her findings by submitting written questions to Parliament on Oct. 21, 2022.
Written answers sent back to her reiterated previously published details and the framework of the charter, but Lewis pronounced she was the first to confirm it.
“The fact that our government has signed a charter with the WEF is an indisputable fact," Lewis told viewers. “It’s unfortunate that it took so long for this fact to actually be confirmed and that the only reason why it’s going to be believed now is that it is in writing in the form of an order paper response from government.”
Amplification
At the time of publication, Lewis’s Jan. 28 tweet had received more than 7,000 likes and 4,000 retweets, and the YouTube video had been viewed more than 18,000 times with more than 900 likes. A shortened version of the YouTube video that appeared on the tweet was also posted on her and had been viewed more than 47,000 times.
Her claim was picked up in stories by right-leaning news media, including and the , which wrote that Lewis was “blowing the whistle on the ‘secrecy’ surrounding the program.”
Lewis did not respond to a request for an interview.
Sources
Twitter posts from Leslyn Lewis on () and (), and ()
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