Mary Zwicker:
Peter Naus and Gregory Tomchyshyn, both former interns at Campaign Life Coalition, ran as candidates in the June 2 Ontario election, the first CLC summer interns to do so. Naus ran with the New Blue party in Scarborough Southwest, and Tomchyshyn for the Ontario Party in Mississauga East-Cooksville. The New Blue received 125,980 votes provincially, 373 going to Naus. The Ontario Party had 83,718 votes province-wide, Tomchyshyn coming away with 625.
Naus worked at Campaign Life Coalition for two summers in 2018 and 2019, describing it as one of his most valuable experiences. Naus said the internship helped to inspire his decision to get involved in the election because of what he learned about politics. Asked if the internship taught him to advance pro-life issues in the political sphere, Naus said CLC taught him that every life matters and that the most important lesson he learned at CLC was to stay true to pro-life values.
Naus said that he has always been more interested in science and math than politics, but that the words of Jim Hughes – “if you don’t get involved with politics, politics will get involved with you!” – resonated with him. He said he was inspired to run when the Ontario lockdowns impeded him from participating in the things he loved. Naus said that he could not stand idly by while the freedoms of Ontarians were under attack and he chose the New Blue because he “was inspired by Jim and Belinda’s integrity, how they refused to abandon their conservative values even when the pressure was on.”
Naus said that he was surprised at the number of constituents who contacted him to discuss pro-life values. He said that several teachers, fed up with the Wynne-Ford sex-ed curriculum, contacted him and “expressed their support for Jim and Belinda’s New Blue Platform promise to scrap critical race theory and unscientific gender identity theory from the public curriculum.”
Gregory Tomchyshyn, who also worked in 2018 and 2019 with with CLC, said that his time at Campaign Life Coalition was a “catalyst” for getting him involved in politics and that it gave him valuable insight into how pro-life and pro-family values could be addressed within the political sphere.
Tomchyshyn said his choice to run for the Ontario Party was a simple one: that of the various party platforms, the Ontario Party’s best aligned with his own values. He said that he saw this election as an opportunity to fix many of the problems in society, and that “instead of waiting for someone else to come along and attempt to correct our culture of death, I decided that I had to be that ‘someone’.”
Tomchyshyn said few people brought up concerns regarding moral issues during his campaign, that most people were concerned with issues such as healthcare or affordability. He said that in order to change this, we need to emphasize “how issues like abortion and parental rights are inherently linked with these bigger problems, given how I believe that ourselves, as human beings, and the traditional family are our greatest resource that we must protect and nurture.”
Tomchyshyn is excited to remain involved in politics, and says that this “is only the beginning” for him. Naus said he hopes to become more active in politics, including a more active role in his Conservative Party of Canada electoral district association as a board member. He said that he is currently developing connections and helping pro-life candidate Leslyn Lewis in the Conservative Party’s federal leadership race. Naus also hopes to find work as a parliamentary assistant.
Maeve Roche, a former summer intern of two years and current youth coordinator of Campaign Life’s Youth Coalition, expressed her pride in Naus and Tomchyshyn’s political involvement because a goal of the internship is to form young people who can carry pro-life values into the world. She said that CLC’s internship program provides interns with a strong foundation for political involvement and that while the internship provides youth with a place where they can be “surrounded and educated by like-minded people,” it does not shelter them from reality.
Roche cautioned Naus and Tomchyshyn that CLC often sees “doe-eyed and bushy-tailed” politicians enter politics with a firm conviction to change, but themselves end up being changed. She urged Naus and Tomchyshyn to stand firm in their convictions, even in the face of hardship.
