NDP candidate wants to force ‘sensitivity training’ on Sun News over anti-transgender pro-family ad
TORONTO, Ontario, November 28, 2011 – The parent company of Canada’s Sun News chain has been targeted by a homosexual activist and former NDP candidate after it aired ads that were critical of teaching young children about “transgenderism” in school.
Toronto teacher Michael Erickson, who ran for the federal NDP in the May election, has launched a Change.org petition slamming Quebecor for running “transphobic” ads by Charles McVety’s Institute for Canadian Values in October on its Sun News Network and in the Toronto Sun paper.
The ads, sparked by a Toronto District School Board policy forbidding parents to withdraw their children from pro-homosexual classes, featured images of young children pleading “Please! Don’t confuse me.”
“I’m a girl. Don’t teach me to question if I’m a boy, transsexual, transgendered, intersexed or two spirited,” the ad read.
According to Erickson’s petition, the ad “encourages viewers to gather together and fight for a world filled with hate, hurt and permanent labels - a world where some people are more human than others.”
“And Quebecor provided a grand public stage for this hurt and hate,” it adds.
Erickson is calling on Quebecor C.E.O. and president Pierre Karl Peladeau to correct the “hurt and hate” promoted by the ad, and urges the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council and Advertising Standards Canada to take action against the company if Peladeau fails to do so by December 5th.
Measures proposed by Erickson include three hours of “sensitivity training” for employees earning more than $90,000, and a full-scale “equitable portrayal” audit to judge the air time given to “trans, transsexual, transgender, two-spirited, intersex, bisexual, lesbian and gay people,” and to establish targets to improve their representation.
Erickson also wants Quebecor to direct the funds from the ad to a gay activist group, to give such a group two hours of free air-time, and to institute a one-year moratorium on circulating any ads by McVety’s organizations.
The petition had garnered less than 400 signatures as of press time.
McVety’s ad stirred controversy after it first ran in the National Post on Sept. 24th. The paper subsequently apologized, and pledged to donate the funds to a homosexual activist group.
Brian Lilley, host of the Sun News Network’s Byline, accused Erickson of “lawfare,” of aiming “to harass us into accepting his point of view and not allow any others.”
He said on his show Nov. 25th that Erickson is trying to “shut up” an opposing view “rather than fight back using his own words, asking to come on the show, [or] buying his own ad to counter the ad.”
“He wants money, free ads, control of our human resources and a ban on a potential client buying any ads from us for any reason or on any issue,” he continued. “It’s starting to sound like Michael Erickson, the NDP candidate and high school teacher wants to run this company.”
