Ontario Liberals paid $4 million - TV ads pushing graphic sex-ed & LGBT agenda
The Ontario Liberal government spent $4 million in taxpayers
dollars on an online and television advertising campaign in September 2015 to
sell its controversial sex-ed curriculum, LifeSiteNews has learned through
documents obtained in a Freedom of Information request.
Email correspondence from Education Minister Liz Sandals also
reveals she opposed MPPs holding constituency community meetings on contentious
the sex-ed curriculum, which was rolled out in Ontario’s publicly funded
schools September 2015, and that she was especially concerned the LGBTQ
community was satisfied with the sex-ed television ads.
The sex-ed curriculum introduces homosexuality in Grade 3,
masturbation in Grade 6, oral and anal sex in Grade 7, and teaches that there
are six genders rather than two biological sexes, according to a detailed
analysis of the Campaign Life Coalition.
The Liberals had already spent $1.8 million for sex-ed radio ads
in May 2015, so adding $4 million for the online and TV campaign, and the HST,
brings the total the Liberals spent to ease public concerns about the sex-ed
curriculum to $6.5 million.
In comparison, the Liberals spent $2.5 million on its 2010
kindergarten ad campaign, and $1.56 million on a 2010 child care ad campaign
(before HST), according to a June 2, 2015 internal email from Ministry of
Education communications advisor Gary Wheeler.
The emails reveal strategizing between the offices of Premier
Kathleen Wynne, minister Sandals, and the ministry of education to manage
controversy surrounding the sex-ed curriculum.
That included not publicizing the cost of the campaign, even
when Globe & Mail reporter Jane Taber emailed August 31 to double-check.
“No price tag?” she writes. “The Campaign Life guys are accusing
the government of using taxpayers’ money on an issue that so many disagree
with. So I wanted to get a cost.”
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“We don’t usually share the ad buy cost,” Rebecca
MacKenzie, Wynne’s communications director, had noted in an internal email
earlier that day.
“Think we maintain the same message and not get into the cost,”
Bill Killorn, Wynne’s director of issues management wrote to Alessandra Fusco,
Sandals’ press secretary and issues manager, and MacKenzie in response to
Taber’s question.
“But we should maybe add how many different groups fed into the
curriculum and are supportive of it to speak to the ‘so many people disagree
with line,’” he added.
The result from Fusco is a paragraph emphasizing the number of
groups consulted on the sex-ed curriculum, such as, “parents teachers,
students, the police, Children’s Aid Societies, the Centre for Mental Health
and others.
The Liberals shelled out $41,810 to the Toronto-based market
research firm The Strategic Counsel for “opinion research” — six focus groups
in June at the cost of $30,510 and four “mini group” in August, at the cost of
$11,300.
Evidently it paid off, as noted in a July 13, 2015 email from
the marketing director for the premier’s office. “Focus grps are really
positive about the ad campaign,” writes Ann Byberg to Sandals communication
advisor Mora Carruthers, Logan Byberg, and Lauren Tedesco, Sandals’ director of
communication.
“The scenarios are making people more comfy with curriculum. The
chart shown which age/grade is taught what is a big, big converter of people —
once they see it, even people who are quite concerned are much more positive
after reading it.”
According to a memo dated July 8, 2015 from deputy minister of
education George Zegarac, the government budgeted $60,000 for market research;
$3,000,000 for fees to Toronto-based media agency PHD Canada, and $990,000 for
Toronto advertising agency Grey Canada for the online and television ad
campaign.
The original June 15 estimate of $750,000 for television ads in
suggested languages of Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, Korean, Polish, Punjabi and Urdu
was increased to $990,000 “to provide for the development and execution of
additional elements to support ethnic communities,” notes a July 8 amendment
letter to Grey Canada from the ministry’s Murray Leaning.
Sandals also clamped down on MPPs holding constituency community
meetings on sex-ed.
Andre Ghione, communications director of the Liberal Caucus
Service Bureau (LCSB) stated in a May 26 email to the caucus email that sex-ed
ads should be placed through the LCSB. Newspapers ads could include the local
MPPs photo, contact info, “as well as any details about community meetings.”
“Why are we sending out templates that still suggest community
meetings are a good idea?” Sandals asked in a May 26 email.
“We had reviewed this last week with the minister,” Tedesco
wrote to Katie Williams, Sandals’s policy advisor, and Carruthers, “and she
specifically requested that the community meetings be removed from the MPP
templates.”
Sandals is also particularly sensitive to the LGBTQ community’s
response to the ads.
“Has there been any modification to the voice over to address
[name redacted]’s concerns?” she asks Tedesco and others on August 28.
“They showed the ad to those in the LGBQT community here at
Queen’s Park to see if anyone had the same concerns — they did not,” writes
back Tedesco. “With the ad buy already purchased, and the AG’s approval, they
won’t be able to tweak the ad until later, and will only do so if we get
pushback from the community.”
“Ok,” Sandals responds. “Just as long as we have vetted the ad
with others in the LGBTQ community.”
Within four months of the curriculum’s February release, the
Canadian Families Alliance, a grassroots coalition of parents’ rights groups,
community, ethnic and faith associations representing about 200,000
Ontarians, organized a June 7 rally at Queen’s Park attended by 5,000 people,
and gathered 185,000 names to a petition to repeal the curriculum that Tory MPP
Monte McNaughton delivered to Queen’s Park on June 1.
An unprecedented two-month student strike in Thorncliffe Park, a
predominantly Muslim community in Wynne’s Don Valley West constituency, emptied
the local elementary school by half in the first days of the 2015 school year
as the Liberals rolled out the curriculum in all the province’s publicly funded
schools.
On September 2, a CLC-organized provincial day of protests,
people held rallies against the sex-ed curriculum in front of 103 of the 107
Ontario MPP offices.
Parental outrage at the sex-ed curriculum also led to an
increase in new private schools opening in and around Toronto.
