The Ontario Horse Racing Industry Association has expanded its awareness campaign and has reached out to inform everyone of the progress it has made via a direct-to-mail email campaign
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OHRIA is encouraging all to check out value4money.ca and to do all you can do to help it save the Ontario horse-racing industry.
The contents of OHRIA's initial release via its email campaign appear below.
I wanted to take the time to write you to thank you for your efforts to support Ontario's horse racing and breeding industry to date. We have come a long way in the few short weeks since Dwight Duncan dropped a bomb shell on our industry, but there is much more for us to do.
OHRIA acted quickly and retained the professional services of public relations and government relations experts to help protect our industry. This has assisted in our ability to effectively reach the public through media outlets, and opened doors at Queen's Park as we seek to resolve this.
There have been hundreds of newspaper articles, and dozens of radio and TV appearances that have helped us get our message out there. We've also undertaken a bill board and transit shelter advertising campaign in more than three dozen communities, and have radio ads playing on eight radio stations that cover most of southern Ontario.
Our website value4money.ca has allowed thousands of people to write MPPs directly and while each and every form email likely is not read, they are certainly being counted. We've also initiated a petition drive, and have received more than five hundred pages of signatures by mail in the first few days alone.
Soon OHRIA will be launching an ad-mail campaign to more than 250,000 households to directly explain the benefits of Ontario's horse racing and breeding industry and the importance of the OLG Slots at Racetrack Program. We've got a number of other exciting initiatives we will begin rolling out in the days and weeks ahead as well.
We continue to represent the entire horse racing and breeding industry in our meetings with government officials and are asking that each and every person who is impacted by our industry do all that they can to help.
Please take the time to download our petition, get friends and family to sign it and mail it back to the OHRIA office. Petitions can be downloaded by clicking here.
If you have not visited value4money.ca and sent a message to MPPs using our 'Take Action' form, please do today. If you have not mailed a letter to the Premier or Minister Duncan and your own MPP, please do so today. You can find their contact information at http://ontla.on.ca
There is strength in numbers and unity of purpose when representatives from horsepeople, breeders, racetracks and importantly from all three breeds work together with all members and associated equine industry partners to preserve our future. We are proud of the work so many are doing to assist and I want to end by underscoring how important your involvement and activism is in all this.
We will strive to keep you updated as future initiatives roll out. Thank you again for all that you're doing to protect our industry.
Thank You.