By Pepper Parr
May 30th, 2022
BURLINGTON, ON
Stop the Campbellville Quarry
Protests, email efforts, using social media to the max – they are all part of bringing about a change in what a government wants to do.
The Reform Gravel Mining Coalition took things a couple of steps further – the set themselves up as Third Party Advertisers.
A third party is any person or entity that is not a political party, candidate or constituency association, and that engages in political advertising.
Thousands were mailed out to the residents of Halton
They were able to raise funds and paid for the printing of thousands of brochures that were put in the mail to everyone they felt was impacted by the plans for the Campbellville Quarry which Premier Doug Ford is on record saying it would not be permitted to grow.
That speech by the Premier is on their web site.
We asked for a copy of the pamphlet and were told that they had spent all their advertising money.
We explained that ours was a news story about a group of people putting their shoulders to the wheel to prevent a quarry development from taking place.
Third party advertisers are not a new addition to the game of politics. They just haven’t been used all that much.
The work done by the Reform Gravel Mining Coalition is a welcome example of what should be done more often – the words coming from the candidates need to be balanced by more public points of view.
Third Party Advertisers are bound tightly by all kinds of rules which is unfortunate – the public needs every opportunity possible to get their views out into the public domain.
The political parties flood the airways – television and radio – telling THEIR story which is often short a lot of facts.
Graham Flint, co-chair of the group, said the coalition formed after decades of “chronic” quarry development in the province.
“After years and years of having individual communities deal with aggregate issues, a group of us felt that it was time to form a broader coalition and elevate the issues that these individual communities were facing to to a higher level to awareness across the province overall,” Flint said.
“Gravel mining is not a benign activity,” Flint said. “It destroys the natural environment and damages communities. Its product is the feed source for highways and sprawl, the various things that are accelerating the climate crisis that we need to get under control.”
