"What will the Undecided Party do to reduce poverty across the counrty?"

Having spent much of our lives below the poverty level, Mandy (Bubbles) LaRue, we at the Undecided Party feel that the reason for the lack of any genuine sympathy on the part of most elected members is the simple fact that they don't know what they're missing - things like food, clothes, and heat in the winter.

Clearly Members of Parliament (with a base salary in 2015 of $163,700, and among the top 2% of Canadian income earners) have no idea what it's like to try to make ends meet when your fondest wish is to be able to claw your all the way up to the poverty level, and perhaps they simply don't realize that taking money away from things like equalization and unemployment, doesn't actually help the poor - even if they keep tax havens open in the Caribbean. So, giving Members the benefit of the doubt, and making allowances for their endearingly simplistic view of the world, we at the Undecided Party suggest "participatory education."

We propose that for one month of every year, each serving MP will be required to eat the diet of a minimum wage earner (Kraft Dinner), live in the accommodations of a minimum wage earner (one-room bedsit), use the transportation of a minimum wage earner (walk), and, to be fair, even experience the occasional luxuries in the leisure time life of a minimum wage earner (Big Mac by candle light - in order to save on the light bill).

As with the University Boards and tuition rates, we feel that some enforced empathy would go a long way toward a serious reconsideration of Ottawa's attitudes towards the unemployed and working poor - if only to make the MP's one-month ordeal a little easier for the next year.

Of course, we fully realize that there is no chance that any mainstream party or its members would ever agree to lower themselves to the level of so many of their constituents.

...but wouldn't it be nice if we could make 'em?