We continue to be just thrilled by the amount of support and momentum that our petition has gathered, and truly humbled by so many of your emails and comments. It’s true that this change in legislation is long overdue...it makes no sense that in an era where we have access and awareness to the irrefutable health effects of secondhand smoke, that we continue to have laws in place that allow neighbours to poison each other. There’s no law or precedent in Canada that says you’re allowed to poison someone else....and if this concoction of cancer-causing chemicals were “administered” to us knowingly in any other form - like sprayed at us in a water bottle, or served up daily in our cereal - it would constitute assault or even attempted murder!

And so we celebrate that so far over 14,000 people have signed the online change.org petition, and that we’ve received close to 800 paper-based signatures with more arriving every day (these are ones that count in the BC legislature’s rules). And we now even have organizations/stakeholders such as the Clean Air Coalition and Smoke-Free Housing BC offering to also submit a letter of support that we can present along with our petition and signatures to the legislature. How wonderful is that?!

We encourage all of you to continue spreading the word, keep a paper petition with you wherever you go and engage others in conversation about this topic (and hopefully get some extra signatures in the process). Refer to our airweshare.ca/what-to-say page to consider what types of responses you may wish to use, and/or prepare for what types of questions or opposition you might hear from even those who are supportive of this initiative!

And if you’re involved in an organization that has a stake in the health and wellness of others, or that has knowledge of other reasons why having all multi-unit dwellings go smoke-free would be a positive thing (ie. reduce risk of residential fires and deaths, or reduce insurance costs, or increase property values, or....) then please consider sending in a letter in support of this initiative in addition to your individual signatures or approach those in your organization that can.

Thanks for all you are doing to make this initiative what it is. Alone we’d be getting nowhere. It’s because of every single person that joins that we are making the headway we are!!!