Voter turnout in municipal and school board elections are typically lower than provincial and federal elections, but for pro-life and pro-family voters, the issues can be just as important. Campaign Life Coalition has been organizing for this fall’s school board election since mid-2013, actively recruiting and working with pro-life and pro-family candidates to run for school board trustee.
Five provinces will head to the polls in October and November for local elections: Manitoba and rural municipalities in Saskatchewan on Oct. 22, Ontario on Oct. 27, Prince Edward Island on Nov. 3, and British Columbia on Nov. 15.
CLC’s website notes that “the decisions of school board representatives often affect our day-to-day lives to a greater degree than higher levels of politics.” This is especially true for families with school-age children.
Schools across the country are pushing sex education and other initiatives that challenge traditional moral norms, and this is being done in public and Catholic school systems. CLC encourages voters to support only candidates that stand up for traditional moral values and the rights of parents as first educators.
While curriculum falls mostly to the provincial ministries of education, it is the school board that administers most programs, provides resources, and is responsible for hiring. As such, the school board is often the last line of defense against bureaucrats with political agendas. As CLC says, “In addition to the various issues pertaining to the management of schools, school board representatives/trustees are often a last line of defense when it comes to protecting parental rights and rejecting radical sex-education programs pushed forward by the Ministry of Education and leftist teachers unions.”
Jack Fonseca of Campaign Life Coalition explains, the sex ed agenda pushed in schools is “almost always age-inappropriate and influenced by harmful ideologies that have nothing to do with teaching facts.” He added: “Instead, these ideologies, such as promoting the disputed theory of “gender identity”, and celebrating all sexual preferences, have the objective of imprinting the values of a small number of activists onto our children and grandchildren.”
CLC says that “this harmful assault on childhood innocence is happening under the noses of (or at times with the full cooperation of) our elected school board representatives.” It has identified well more than 50 trustee candidates across the country who will defend the rights of parents to direct the moral education of their children and who will oppose the radical agenda pushed by the government. Their website explains, “If people of faith do not get involved at this local level, we surrender these important positions to a minority of people who do get involved, and in most cases, they do not share our pro-life and pro-family values. The spiritual (and often the physical well-being) of your children and grandchildren is at stake in this decision of who gets elected as school board representatives.”
Jeff Gunnarson of CLC told The Interim that many church-going parents do not think what happens at school affects the moral views of their children, especially Catholic parents who send their children to separate schools. “They couldn’t be more wrong,” Gunnarson explains. “When you consider how much time they spend in school each week, the effect is to wear down the moral norms they are taught at church and in the home.”
Gunnarson urged all voters to check the CLC website for information about candidates. It includes, where available, information about past votes and answers to the CLC trustee questionnaire.
“We need to be informed about where our trustee candidates stand on moral issues and the rights of parents,” said Gunnarson. “We need to support the pro-life and pro-family trustees and candidates and defeat those trustees who have stood against life and family.”
Local election dates
Manitoba: Oct. 22
Parts of Saskatchewan: Oct. 22
Ontario: Oct. 27
Prince Edward Island: Nov. 3
British Columbia: Nov. 15
