Back to the minister: Minister, 900,000 people in Ontario are living on social assistance, and they’re living in poverty. Their biggest expense is housing. Upwards of 60% of a person’s social assistance income is going to housing. You cannot afford to live on $733 a month if you’re on Ontario Works or $1,227 a month if you’re on disability payments.

Minister, I am asking you to join us on this social-assistance diet to have a better understanding of what it is like to be on social assistance, and I am calling on this government to double social assistance rates to help people get out of poverty. Can you do that?

My question is to the Premier. For two weeks, along with several of my colleagues, I am living on a social-assistance grocery budget of $47.60 a week. Many people who have to rely on social assistance have contacted us since this action went public to tell us that the meagre amount we have allowed ourselves for food is almost double what a single person living on social assistance has available for food after paying rent.

Indeed, it is abundantly clear that the government needs to double the rates of ODSP and Ontario Works. Will the Minister of Children, Community and Social Services join us for this two-week advocacy effort so that she might better understand, even briefly, the hardship that ODSP and OW recipients have to endure in their daily lives?