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i lhe lribune vol 105 no 11 ametrolandcominumtyneivspaper wednesday march 17 1993 20 pages 50 cents welfare unemployed have tough road ahead york tracy kibble staff reporter a large number of yorks unemployed have been out of the workforce for more than a year and will likely lag behind when companies begin the rehiring process yorks community services commissioner peter crichton said a lot of the regions wel fare recipients have been out of the labor market for more than 12 months this will likely stifle their chances of being among com panies first choice picks when economic forecasts improve he said there are certain economic indicators that say the reces sion is over but there are cer tain other indicators that say even when the economy pros pers we will not feel the impact crichton said he added reports show that while the economic outlook is encouraging for some sectors consumer spending and hiring has made no improvement yorks community services department presented its first report of 1993 which indicat ed 8756 people or three per cent of the regions 404000 population are out of work and on social assistance this is the highest range weve ever had crichton said he said january showed a significant jump over decembers figures but that the surge was only temporary we didnt know exactly why this happened we attribute it to the theory of things its an inexact science crichton said last week he said januarys figures are the result of employment pat terns from months ago and blamed unemployment insur ance commission uic cut offs as the primary reason peo ple turned to welfare in early 93 york taxpayers spent 926000 in january to keep their unemployed neighbors off the streets a 64 million provincial tab in the first month of the new year attewell jumps on campbell bandwagon kim campbells bid for the progressive conservative party leadership will be led in the metro toronto area by markham whitchurch-stouf- fville mp bill attewell with the decision on the weekend by external affairs minister barbara mcdougall not to seek the tory leadership and retire from politics attewell who would have been the cochair of mcdougalls campaign has decided to sup port campbell kims campaign has asked me to head up metro and with barbara no longer in the race ive agreed said attewell in an interview from ottawa monday he admitted that campbell was his second choice for the leadership i think that barbara would have been an excellent choice but i respect her decision shes given a lot of her time to public life and she wanted to spend please see page 7 hydro plans no surprise to local commission tracy kibble staff reporter parental input sought each year the english and french sections of the york region roman catholic sepa rate school board review their special eduction pro grams and services ratepayers are invited to take part in this years pro cess interested residents should submit a written statement on any aspect of special education services and programs by march 30 send submissions to sandra reinsborough superinten dent of student and instruc tional services 8911 wood bine ave markham l3r 5g1 ontario hydros recent restructuring and cost reduction plans to help deplete its burgeoning debt were no great surprise to local commission engineer walter metcalfe metcalfe predicted last january that hydro would be forced this year to listen to provincial commissions and its cashstrapped cus tomers before rates grew completely out of hand i think in the future we will see some encouraging signs that will mean less rate hikes from ontario hydro metcalfe told the tribune about two months ago the whitchurchstouffville hydro commission was forced to hike its rate by seven per cent in 1993 an increase metcalfe insisted was bottom line in order to keep up with essential maintenance programs the local commission also sent hydro a letter last month stress ing great concern to the debtridden corporations rate hikes which were being pawned off to customers in the letter commission chairman robert smith accused ontario hydro ceo maurice strong of spending unwisely and sending confusing economic messages to commissions across the province hydro promised no rate hikes in 1994 by slashing about 6000 jobs in a move already approved by the board of directors the cuts will result in 875 million savings next year which could swell to 14 billion by 1996 reports indicate by freezing several nuclear energy operations deferring major hydro projects and reducing previously planned purchases and restructuring its operations hydro hopes to keep a line on hikes for the next few years reports show critics however say hydros cutbacks will only transfer the burden onto social assistance pro grams when thousands of layed off employees turn to unemploy ment insurance commission and welfare ti t t vf-rrv- wy t ftt 1 i i 1 j 4 i i 1 3