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Poverty Reduction = Growing Stronger Together in Deb Matthews' Private Thesaurus

How does Deb Matthews expect to reduce poverty until her semantics obsession ends?

What is key: inviting a known anti-poverty organization that has fought for basic human rights for the poor and disaffected for nearly 20 years to a meeting to discuss these very issues OR the name of a secret club?

Deb Matthews apparently invited The Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) to attend one of her poverty meetings. Matthews forgot to send OCAP their very own decoder ring, so they could figure out she actually wanted to hear what they had to say. Or did she? Was this a sneaky way to keep OCAP out while actually issuing a pseudo-invite?

John Clarke confirms he and OCAP receive numerous invitations to meet and to speak. After Matthews proclaimed in an interview on CBC's Metro Morning that OCAP had been invited to attend a secret anti-poverty consultation, OCAP called Matthews a liar.

Did Deb Matthews personally call OCAP? No.

Did Maria Van Bommel Parliamentary Assistant Ministry of Child and Youth Services (Deb Matthew's portfolio) call OCAP and leave her name, her minister's name and/or her minister's portfolios? No.

Did someone call OCAP and say they were calling on behalf of Deb Matthews and her Anti-Poverty group and wanted OCAP to attend a meeting? No.

That would have been simple, easy and perhaps focused resources where they belong: eradicating poverty. Naturally a Fiberal can't be expected to do the right or simple thing; they have millions of taxpayers dollars to waste and need excuses to do so.

John Clarke explained what happened, "A woman had left a message on the answering machine here [at OCAP], 'this is for John Clarke', not an invitation to OCAP as such, and I'm from 'Growing [Stronger] Together and we're having a round table on poverty. I thought it was a Corporate Think Tank there was no reasonable grounds to link that [with the meeting]; she didn't mention Matthews, or the Liberal Government, so I erased it."

The plot thickened. Clarke added, "Matthews said we'd been invited, we said she wasn't telling the truth. The same women calls back again using a name of a group that we didn't know but this time leaving the address and from that we figures out it was [the Matthew's meeting]. So in a clumsy way there was an invite".

As much as The Toronto Tribune wants to say Deb Matthews has done absolutely nothing in her role as Anti-the-Poor guru, that would be incorrect. She's come up with a name for the anti-the-poor group she leads: Growing Stronger Together. Matthews did one more thing the anti-the-poor group has their very own website.

Other than spend money on two items (a name and a website) what has Matthews done to help eradicate poverty? The poor can't eat a name, they can't live under a website.

Bad enough that Matthews went about it in the usual underhanded Liberal way; but to suggest OCAP, a known anti-poverty group, would legitimize her pathetic efforts is mere chutzpah. What it isn't, is help to reduce poverty, as Matthews likes to say about the issue. We'd prefer to eradicate poverty, forever.

Not likely to happen with the Liberals in charge, as Clarke points out, "while they talk about reducing poverty, the Liberals continue to let welfare and disability rates lose ground to inflation. They slashed the Special Diet supplement that let thousands of people eat healthier food, they canceled the Rent Bank, and they introduced the confusing Ontario Child Benefit that means parents probably won't be able to buy coats for heir kids this winter. This is not a government that actually cares about poor people, it is a government trying to get political capital by talking a lot about us, but doing nothing for us,"