Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis has endorsed a petition demanding the federal government withdraw from the United Nations (U.N.) and the World Health Organization (WHO).
The petition states “Canada’s agreement to participate in the UN/WHO comprehensive “Agenda 2030″ undermines national sovereignty and personal autonomy”.
Initiated October 10, the petition will be available on the House of Commons website until February 2024 (you can read it below).
The petition asks Parliament to “Urgently implement Canada’s expeditious withdrawal from the U.N. and all of its subsidiary organizations, including WHO”. It goes on to allege participating in the U.N.’s Agenda 2030 undermines Canadian sovereignty. Agenda 2030 is the U.N.’s plan to end poverty and hunger, promote equality, and take “urgent action on climate change” through “Sustainable Development Goals” or SDGs.
While many of the 91 declarations in Agenda 2030 sound perfectly reasonable, others are the source f major concern and suspicion. Examples causing distress include declaration 28 and declaration 31.
Declaration 28 states “We commit to making fundamental changes in the way that our societies produce and consume goods and services… individuals must contribute to changing unsustainable consumption and production patterns.” Obviously there has never been a national discussion confirming that Canadians believe consumption and production patterns are ‘unsustainable’. Needless to say if Canadians were forced to reduce consumption patterns, all Canadians and Canadian owned businesses would be profoundly impacted.
Meanwhile, Declaration 31 is a major concern for the Canadian energy sector and anyone concerned with both the availability and the cost of energy. Declaration 31 urges governments to follow international direction, stating “We acknowledge that the UNFCCC is the primary international intergovernmental forum for negotiating the global response to climate change.”
At the UN Climate Conference in Dubai, UAE later this year, the UNFCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) will promote dropping efforts to replace dirty coal production with much cleaner solutions like Canadian LNG in favour of “fast-tracking the energy transition and slashing emissions before 2030.”
Just over one week since this petition was opened (Oct. 10), it’s closing in on 40,000 signatures. Canadians have until February 7, 2024 to sign it.
With support from at least five other citizens and at least one sitting MP, any Canadian can bring a petition to Canada’s House of Commons.
If more than 500 people sign a petition it will be presented to the House of Commons for official government response.
Original language of petition: English
To the naked eye, it looks about as exciting as baking soda or table salt.
But to the scientists in the University of Calgary chemistry lab who have spent more than a decade working on it, this white powder is nothing short of amazing.
That’s because the material they invented is garnering global attention as a new solution to help address climate change.
Known as Calgary Framework-20 (CALF-20 for short), it has “an exceptional capacity to absorb carbon dioxide” and was recognized in connection with the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
A jar of CALF-20, a metal-organic framework (MOF) used in carbon capture. Photo courtesy UCalgary
“It’s basically a molecular sponge that can adsorb CO2 very efficiently,” said Dr. George Shimizu, a UCalgary chemistry professor who leads the research group that first developed CALF-20 in 2013.
The team has been refining its effectiveness ever since.
“CALF-20 is a very exciting compound to work on because it has been a great example of translating basic science into something that works to solve a problem in the real world,” Shimizu said.
Advancing CCS
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is not a new science in Alberta. Since 2015, operating projects in the province have removed 15 million tonnes of CO2 that would have otherwise been emitted to the atmosphere.
Alberta has nearly 60 proposed facilities for new CCS networks including the Pathways oil sands project, according to the Regina-based International CCS Knowledge Centre.
This year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to three of Shimizu’s colleagues in Japan, Australia and the United States, for developing the earliest versions of materials like CALF-20 between 1989 and 2003.
Custom-built molecules
CALF-20 is in a class called metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) — custom-built molecules that are particularly good at capturing and storing specific substances.
MOFs are leading to new technologies for harvesting water from air in the desert, storing toxic gases, and capturing CO2 from industrial exhaust or directly from the atmosphere.
CALF-20 is one of the few MOF compounds that has advanced to commercial use.
“There has been so much discussion about all the possible uses of MOFs, but there has been a lot of hype versus reality, and CALF-20 is the first to be proven stable and effective enough to be used at an industrial scale,” Shimizu said.
It has been licensed to companies capturing carbon across a range of industries, with the raw material now being produced by the tonne by chemical giant BASF.
CO2 pipeline at the Quest CCS project near Edmonton, Alta. Photo courtesy Shell Canada
Carbon capture filter gigafactory
Svante Inc. has demonstrated its CALF-20-based carbon capture system at a cement plant in British Columbia.
The company recently opened a “gigafactory” in Burnaby equipped to manufacture enough carbon capture and removal filters for up to 10 million tonnes of CO2 annually, equivalent to the emissions of more than 2.3 million cars.
The filters are designed to trap CO2 directly from industrial emissions and the atmosphere, the company says.
Svante chief operating officer Richard Laliberté called the Nobel committee’s recognition “a profound validation” for the entire field of carbon capture and removal.
CALF-20 expansion
Meanwhile, one of Shimizu’s former PhD students helped launch a spinoff company, Existent Sorbents, to further expand the applications of CALF-20.
Existent is working with oil sands producers, a major steel factory and a U.S.-based firm capturing emissions from other point sources, said CEO Adrien Côté.
“The first users of CALF-20 are leaders who took the risk of introducing new technology to industries that are shrewd about their top and bottom lines,” Côté said.
“It has been a long journey, but we are at the point where CALF-20 has proven to be resilient and able to survive in harsh real-world conditions, and we are excited to bring this made-in-Canada innovation to the world.”
Billionaire Bill Gates — long one of the loudest voices warning of climate catastrophe — now says the world has bigger problems to worry about. In a 17-page memo released Tuesday, the Microsoft co-founder called for a “strategic pivot” away from the obsessive focus on reducing global temperatures, urging leaders instead to prioritize fighting poverty and eradicating disease in the developing world. “Climate change is a serious problem, but it’s not the end of humanity,” Gates wrote.
Gates, 70, argued that global leaders have lost perspective by treating climate change as an existential crisis while millions continue to suffer from preventable diseases like malaria. “If I had to choose between eradicating malaria and preventing a tenth of a degree of warming, I’d let the temperature go up 0.1 degree,” he told reporters ahead of next month’s U.N. climate conference in Brazil. “People don’t understand the suffering that exists today.”
For decades, Gates has positioned himself as a leading advocate for global climate initiatives, investing billions in green energy projects and warning of the dangers of rising emissions. Yet his latest comments mark a striking reversal — and a rare admission that the world’s climate panic may have gone too far. “If you think climate is not important, you won’t agree with the memo,” Gates told journalists. “If you think climate is the only cause and apocalyptic, you won’t agree with the memo. It’s a pragmatic view from someone trying to maximize the money and innovation that helps poor countries.”
The billionaire’s change in tone is sure to raise eyebrows ahead of the U.N. conference, where climate activists plan to push for new emissions targets and wealth transfers from developed nations. Critics have long accused Gates and other elites of hypocrisy for lecturing the public about fossil fuels while traveling the globe on private jets. Now, Gates himself appears to be distancing from the doomsday rhetoric he once helped spread, effectively admitting that humanity faces more immediate moral imperatives than the weather.
(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Stunning Climate Change pivot from Bill Gates. Poverty and disease should be top concern.
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