FALSE: Canada strategic planning committee’s COVID-19 road map

At a glance:

• Claim: Canada’s “Strategic Planning” committee is making plans for stricter lockdowns, “total debt forgiveness” with the International Monetary Fund, and vaccinations against “COVID-21.”
• Rating: FALSE
• The facts: The “strategic planning committee” does not exist in Canada’s House of Commons or Senate, the IMF does not plan on providing “total debt forgiveness” to any single nation, and there is no such disease as “COVID-21.”
• Why we fact checked this: A reader emailed a version of this claim to Rappler for verification. The video they sent us had 2.8 million views, 23,000 reactions, and 15,000 comments as of posting.

Complete details:

Canada’s strategic planning committee, which is “steered” by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), is supposedly making plans for stricter lockdowns. They also have plans for “total debt forgiveness” in collaboration with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in exchange for agreeing to be vaccinated against “COVID-21.”

This claim was made in a live video by the Facebook page “Lynn Channel” on October 21, and it has since received 2.8 million views, 23,000 reactions, and 15,000 comments. This was emailed to Rappler for verification.

It was also claimed on the website “The Canadian Report” on October 14. The article on their site had 16,877 interactions on Facebook, according to the social media monitoring tool CrowdTangle.

This claim is false.

The “strategic planning committee” does not exist in Canada’s House of Commons or Senate, the IMF does not plan on providing “total debt forgiveness” to any single nation, and there is no such disease as “COVID-21.”

The official website of Canada’s House of Commons lists 26 committees and two joint committees, none of which is called “strategic planning.” Their Senate website lists 18 committees, none of which is called “strategic planning.”

There are no Cabinet members or parliamentary secretaries listed on the PMO’s website who lead a “strategic planning” committee.

In a fact check article about this claim, Reuters said that a PMO spokesperson also told them that there was no such committee in existence. Reuters is an official signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN).

The claim also said that the Canadian government would “eliminate all personal debts (mortgages, loans, credit cards, etc)” through the IMF’s “World Debt Reset” program.

Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the IMF, published a blog post titled “The Global Economic Reset – Promoting a More Inclusive Recovery” on June 11.

In the post, she outlined 3 financial priorities for policymakers as countries recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. There was no mention in her post of the IMF paying off the sovereign debts of any one nation.

The disease COVID-21 does not exist. There are no reports by the World Health Organization or Health Canada about such a disease. “COVID-21: Lethal Virus,” is the title of a TV movie. – Vernise Tantuco/Rappler.com

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