Canadian Cancer Society Ontario Takes Action

The Canadian Cancer Society of Ontario's online Take Action campaign connects the province's citizens with their local and provincial government representatives and other policy influencers. The campaign coincides with the 2014 provincial election to motivate political action on issues that affect cancer.

The current campaigns encourage the government to: adopt building codes in Ontario that would eradicate prevalent radon, which can cause lung cancer in high concentrations; prevent cancer by banning the sale of flavoured tobacco products that entice youth to smoke; provide young boys with access to the HPV vaccine that helps prevent cancer; seek adult ratings for films that include smoking.

Participants select a campaign, read a form letter that explains the issues in detail, write their own additional comments and send it off. The system emails it to your local MPP and CCs important policy influencers. Participants don't have to look anything up. After that, the campaign invites you to share the campaigns via social media and email.

The convenience and accessibility of these direct-to-government letters, combined with the actionable awareness delivered to both senders and recipients, makes it one the strongest advocacy campaigns I've seen. I also really like the emphasis on government responsibility. Too many campaigns only promote individual change and the benefits of that are often limited.

As of right now, participants have taken 13,336 actions and shared 7,596 of them. June 12, 2014 is election day. Make sure the Ontario government takes important measures to protect Ontarians from cancer. Take action now.