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Tomorrow, Vote for Penelope's Future

Tomorrow, Vote for Penelope's Future
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Flickr: Scott Meis Photography

As you may have seen, we've employed some creative tactics to draw attention to environmental choices in tomorrow's provincial election in Ontario. Our Penelope4Ontario.ca campaign featured an eight-year-old candidate whose tour brought her to places like Barrie, Ottawa, Hamilton and Guelph, where she promoted her videos, gave speeches, spoke to media and interviewed candidates on their environmental platforms.

The time for child's play is over, though. Our pint-sized candidate, Penelope, has done all that she can do to encourage us to vote with her future in mind. On Oct. 6th, it's now up to us adults to do just that.

Many of us make choices everyday with our kids in mind: from where we live, to the food and toys we buy for them, to the busy family schedule on weekends. One of the most important decisions we can make, however, is to engage as a citizen in our democratic process. While you do what you can for the health and safety of your kids and grandkids, it's up to the government to make the rules that are needed to protect them and ensure they will have clean air, clean water and nature to play in.

We face some enormous challenges at this time. Environmental threats such as unsustainable growth and global warming mean we risk handing a planet to the next generation that is polluted and unstable. But, we also have the opportunity to change our course and choose a clean and healthy future. We can do so by supporting policies that limit pollution and invest in clean energy, that strengthen the protection of our lakes and rivers, and that will help Ontario's Greenbelt to grow in order to protect more green space and agricultural land. To learn more about where the parties stand on these policies, please visit: www.penelope4ontario.ca/report-card.

As a non-partisan charitable organization, we would never tell you how to vote. However, I can urge you to use one of the most powerful tools we as citizens have at our disposal -- VOTE. And before you do, look your kid, grandkid, niece or neighbour's kid in the eye, think about what type of future you want for them, and whether we're making the choices now that will give that to them.

Penelope has done all she can. Now it's up to us.

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