Ontario's registered nurses urging Premier Dalton McGuinty to raise Ontario's minimum wage to $10 per hour.

Even though current Ontario administration lifted the 8-year freeze on minimum wage approximately 200,000 people in Ontario who earn minimum wage and the approximately 1.2 million workers who currently earn less than $10 per hour according to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

At that $8 per hour wage rate, a single parent working full time, living in Thunder Bay, would have an income $6,676 below the poverty line.

A single person working full time, and living in Ottawa, would have an income $5,178 below the poverty line.

The increase of Ontario's minimum wage to $8 per hour that came into effect today (Feb. 1).

"The burden of ill health and early death associated with poverty is
undeniable and as nurses we witness its devastating effects in our day to day work," The Registered Nurses' Association of Ontario write in the open letter, "Poverty is preventable, all the more so in a province as affluent as Ontario."