Paul Tuns:
Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis endorsed a petition calling on Canada to leave the United Nations and the World Health Organization (WHO) because the organizations undermine national sovereignty and the personal autonomy of its citizens.
The petition was launched in October and was signed by nearly 19,000 Canadians in its first month.
The petition explains that the UN’s Agenda 2030’s SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) and the UN’s various bodies’ “Comprehensive Sexuality Education” program are being “rapidly implemented” without the awareness and “consent of the (Canadian) people or their elected representatives.”
The petition states that SDGs could have “negative impacts on potentially every aspect of life” in Canada, including “religious and cultural values, familial relations, education, nutrition, child development, property rights, economic and agricultural productivity, transportation, travel, health, informed consent, privacy and physical autonomy.” The petition warns that the Sustainable Development Goals impose “sweeping impacts on public and private life,” and only “serve the interests of UN/WHO and unelected private entities (e.g. World Economic Forum, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, International Planned Parenthood Federation, etc.), while diminishing the health rights and freedom of Canadians.”
Some of the SDGs, passed by the UN General Assembly in 2015, call for the expansion of “reproductive” services, including contraception and abortion.
When it comes to the UN’s Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE), the petition states that publicly funded educational institutions have been “damaging children while concealing information from parents” through the “normalization … (of) sexual values and activities with regard to children are endorsed and enforced, beginning at birth.” On WHO’s website in a questions and answers page, the World Health Organization says sexual education should start at the age of 5.
The petition warns that WHO’s “secretly negotiated” pandemic plan could, “impose unacceptable, intrusive universal surveillance, violating the rights and freedoms guaranteed in the Canadian Bill of Rights and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.” The Center for Family and Human Rights warned that the pandemic treaty “would use the declaration of pandemics as a platform to promote controversial social issues, including abortion.”
Last year, the Haldimand-Norfolk MP regularly railed against the WHO’s pandemic treaty which would give the organization a greater say in domestic health policy decisions.
Although Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has not commented on the petition, Lewis and the Conservatives were criticized by Liberal MPs. Rob Oliphant (Don Valley West) tweeted, “That is absurd & dangerous coming from the @PierrePoilievre front bench! Is this their new foreign policy? Abandon our international obligations on human rights, women’s rights, children and so much more?” Ryan Turnbull (Whitby) tweeted, “It’s astonishing how the Conservative Party has become a haven for conspiracy theorists & extremists.”
Campaign Life Coalition vice president Matt Wojciechowski told The Interim the petition is a good vehicle to increase awareness of what happens at the United Nations “but it is not the right approach.”
“I’m glad Lewis is speaking up against the UN’s 2030 agenda and exposing Canadians to the evils of the UN’s push for comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) and global demands for abortion-on-demand” and Trudeau’s embrace of these initiatives said Wojciechowski, but “the problem here isn’t with Canada’s membership in the UN, it’s with Trudeau.” He said rather than eschewing the international body, what the UN needs is pro-life leadership.
Wojciechowski explained, “Canada will not actually gain anything from withdrawing its membership from the UN.” He said the same issues are going to be promoted with or without Canadian involvement and they are pushed not only at the United Nations but the Organization of American States and the meetings of the G8 and G20.
More importantly, he said, “being a member of the UN doesn’t require member states to adopt UN resolutions and ideas.”
Wojciechowski pointed out that the UN’s declarations on CSE, abortion, and LGBQT+ issues are non-binding.” He said many countries formally state their reservations over these issues and “point to their sovereignty and their own national laws as the reason why they won’t accept the UN recommendations.”
Wojciechowski said a better approach to these international bodies would be to cut funding to them, noting their promotion of abortion and CSE cost them the full financial support of Canada. He noted that every Republican administration since George H.W. Bush was elected in 1988 has cut funding for international agencies that fund abortion. In 2016, Donald Trump went further and cut funding to any global organization that promoted or committed abortions. Wojciechowski said Canada has a large stick to effect changes at the World Health Organization, considering that Canada, the fifth largest funder of WHO, will be giving it about $1 billion over ten years.
