BC sets Canada's first time limit on welfare, more homeless critics say.

VICTORIA -- The B.C. government has legislated Canada's first time limit. Anyone who has received social assistance for two years will lose their welfare benefits if they have not found a job by April 2004.

The limit is part of the government's plans to cut about 80,000 people from welfare by 2004 to reduce welfare costs from $1.9 billion to about $1.4 billion dollars. Opposition New Democrats and poverty advocates say the cuts will increase homelessness and hunger among B.C.'S poor.

The B.C. government introduced measures that reduce benefits, make it harder to receive welfare and impose new limits and restrictions for many receiving social assistance.

Although the province's Human Resources Minister Murray Coell said he couldn't estimate how many people may end up losing their welfare benefits next spring, he said he is attempting to find jobs for every British Columbian on welfare.

But the NDP has accused Coella and the government of actually hiding the number of people who will be cut off welfare this spring, and produced an internal government document outlining the program; however, the projected numbers of people potentially losing their benefits were blanked out.

Alix Hotsenpiller, Together Against Poverty spokesperson, notes that even though "two-thirds of the people who get off the system are ready to work, the other one-third are vulnerable."

"The one-third is the people who need help the most and they are the ones who are going to be cut off. There will be people who have no food or shelter," she said.

Under the changes, welfare recipients who have not found a job after receiving assistance for two years, could lose their benefits completely or their benefits could be reduced. Single persons who are judged employable will lose all benefits while some single parents face a $100 a month cut.

The time limits for finding a job do not apply to welfare recipients with disabilities, to single parents with a child under three years of age, pregnant women, people with temporary medical conditions which prevents them from seeking work and people enrolled in job training.

Coella, who said the government's job is simple "to find and support people in jobs," noted that his ministry currently has a job bank with 10,000 jobs reserved exclusively for welfare recipients.

Last July there were 117,516 welfare cases in B.C. with the number of temporary cases being 53,940. The number of people receiving assistance who are expected to work was 35,415.