BUSINESSES @TWITTER OVER TWITTER, PG 18 Celebritypg 34 Wife likes a little more of Hugh TORONTO • MONDAY, APRIL 20, 2009
SunnySide pg 17
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Fundraiser Walk for MS COLIN MCCONNELL/TORSTAR NEWS SERVICE
Help Anne Hines choose a new hobby Workology pg 22
School bells may fall silent The words ran hot and passions reached the boiling point — a taste of what’s to come as Toronto public school trustees take up the thorny issue of closing dozens of neighbourhood schools due to declining enrolment. “Bull----! You’re f---ing lying!” yelled parent Steve Wanless Toronto’s Thursday, public schools hurling an have been agenda at shedding trustees as about 4,000 they dis- students per cussed shut- year because ting down the city is the first pub- losing new lic school in immigrants to Toronto the 905, since Mike leading the Harris was board to aim premier. to close But the schools that jeers and fall short of drama may more workbecome rou- able numbers tine as the — 1,200 for Toronto Dis- high schools, trict School 450 for grade Board finally schools. grapples with 110 half-empty schools and the prospect of widespread school closings over the next few years — maybe 25 in 2010, warned trustee Bruce Davis, in an election year at that. Lost amid the hubbub of closing pools at that committee meeting last Thursday was the proposal to close a Scarborough trade school in June that has seen its enrolment tumble to 213 in a building built for 750, despite millions of dollars in technical upgrades that include the most cutting-edge woodworking shop of any high school in Canada. But the distraught crowd that gathered to plead for Timothy Eaton Business and Technical Institute, whose fate will be decided at the board meeting Wednesday, offered a mere glimpse of the battles ahead, said shaken trustees.
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Dogging the bad guys EARTH DAY: APRIL 22
GoGreen In honour of Earth Day on Wednesday, Metro is providing you with ways you can go green and lessen your environmental footprint. TODAY GOING GREEN. While saving
the planet is serious business, you can still have fun while you’re at it. Page 19. LOCAL. Packagers taking steps to reduce their environmental impact. Page 4. TOMORROW HEALTH. Tips to achieving an
eco-friendly sex life. ENTERTAINMENT. How the music industry is going green. EARTH DAY MOVIES. We have a review
of the Disney film Earth. GOING GREEN. A special
section devoted to Earth Day.
In honour of Earth Day, Metro Toronto will be published on recycled paper every day this week.
Thousands of people take part yesterday in the annual MS Walk at Sunnybrook Park. Now in its 18th year, approximately 2,500 participants hoped to raise $900,000 in the Toronto walk.
Falling through social safety net Tens of thousands of unemployed don’t qualify for benefits The most severe recession in decades is exposing the gaping holes in Canada’s vaunted social safety net. Only six months into an economic downturn, social advocates and the jobless say the employment insurance system that was supposed to cushion the fall is, in reality, either inadequate or so hard to access that tens of thousands of newly unemployed just don’t qualify for benefits. As is always the case in times of economic troubles, it’s the most vulnerable that are being hurt most by the recession.
Then and now early 1980s and 1990s, when about 80 per cent of the unemployed collected unemployment insurance, today
less than 43 per cent, or 560,000 of the 1.3 million Canadians who were officially jobless in January, are collecting benefits.
And it’s those Canadians, along with a smattering of individuals with unusual circumstances, who are finding the EI system not as advertised. After giving birth last May, Maninder Rehsi of Maple was only able to acquire 430 insurable hours of work before her employer Progres-
sive Moulded Products succumbed to the recession and went out of business, idling 2,000 workers, including her husband. Under EI requirements for her region, she was out of luck because she hadn’t accumulated 600 insurable hours over the previous 12 months. Now Rehsi says her hus-
• Unlike the recessions of the
band’s benefits are close to exhausted and she doesn’t know how they’ll make ends meet if they don’t find a job soon. Or Deonarine Persaud of Toronto, who lost his nineyear job at a car parts supplier last May and is now barely getting by on his wife’s WalMart salary, after his EI benefits of about $400 a week ran out. “It’s not like I don’t want to work,” said Persaud. “I used to work 50, 60 hours a week sometime. There are no jobs, not just for me, lots of people can’t get jobs now.” THE CANADIAN PRESS
Free Daily News Group Inc., operating as Metro Toronto 1 Concorde Gate, Suite 703, Toronto, Ontario M3C 3N6. Publisher: Bill McDonald
TORSTAR NEWS SERVICE