Campaign Life registers in CKL election as municipal battle winds down

Another right-wing leaning outside group wants to be part of the City of Kawartha Lakes’ municipal election. Campaign Life Coalition, based out of Toronto, declares on its website that it is against same-sex marriage, sex education, homosexuality, pre-marital sex, and the use of contraceptive methods.

“Almost daily, the culture of death spawns new threats to human life, the family and freedom,” its website reads.

Campaign Life Coalition is the national pro-life organization that pushes government at all levels to “secure full legal protection for all human beings, from the time of conception to natural death.”

“We defend the sanctity of human life against threats posed by abortion, euthanasia, doctor assisted suicide, reproductive and genetic technologies, cloning, infanticide, eugenics, population control, and threats to the family,” according to their website.

The Advocate reached out to Jeff Gunnarson, president of Campaign Life Coalition, to find out why it was registering in the City of Kawartha Lakes’ election.

Gunnarson says they are required by the new rules laid out by the Ministry of Municipal affairs that corporations (which includes non-profits) are to register if they spend money “promoting or agitating against a candidate running for elected office.”

“Our website is the only public manifestation of third party advertising as it includes ratings of of the candidates. So we had to register in every municipality where we had rated a candidate, whether for trustee, councillor or mayor,” he explains.

“We will spend more money registering, and filing financial statements than we do in the whole election,” says Gunnarson.

Since the rules stated that any potential third party advertiser had to do so in person (by Friday Oct, 19 at 4:30 pm) Campaign Life “called on our volunteers and had a huge response.”

“The remaining days will be spent messaging our supporters to vote for “green lighted” candidates,” he says.

The Advocate used Campaign Life’s online search function to figure out what councillor or mayor might be promoted or agitated against, but found no candidates in Kawartha Lakes listed. Gunnarson didn’t return the answer to this follow-up question at publishing time. The Advocate did find a school trustee, David Morrison, who was given a ‘red light’ by Campaign Life. It is possible other school trustees might be rated on the website, but with no full list available the Advocate has no way of knowing.

According to Campaign Life’s website, school trustees “can develop or introduce programs that teach the values of purity, self-respect and chastity. They can decide to stop offending Christian families and those of other faith traditions by no longer flying the homosexual pride flag over schools, a growing trend with public school boards.”