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Re: 'MPPS feel the heat at poverty meeting,' News, June 11.

I attended the meeting at Meadowvale Public School and the only heat that the four MPPs felt was from the sweltering humidity.

I could not believe my ears when I heard Scarborough Centre MPP Brad Duguid bring up the 'old chestnut' about how businesses would leave if the minimum wage was raised.

My Liberal MPP used that in the election in 2002 against increasing it to $8. That amount has come and gone and the businesses are still there. I think Duguid would do well to find another excuse.

He would not like the voter to know that when the minimum wage is raised, it means the working poor have a bit more to spend, which they do, perhaps on things they couldn't afford before, thus helping many local businesses.

Those men on the hot seat should have been appalled, as I was, to learn that many local children go to school without both breakfast and lunch. Could this be happening in wealthy Ontario?

It should shame us all, especially those who voted Liberal in the last provincial election.

There we sat, a group of caring people, while four MPPs were asking us what we could do to help in the fight against poverty. Should it not be the other way around? Shouldn't those elected members be telling us what they are going to do to ease the plight of the poor and the working poor?

If they don't know the answer to that question then they should never be re-elected.

Joy Taylor