This website is a testimony to the problems Canadian Student Loan borrowers experienced from approximately 1996 to 2008 and until their loans were paid off.

The privatization of the Student Loans system by the Chretien and Martin Liberal governments broke the system and defaulted thousands of borrowers who were trying to pay their loans. There were even stories of suicide due to the harassment of borrowers.

Read the report that I prepared back in 2007 here. Canada Student Loans-The Need for Change Fortunately the new Conservative government at the time revamped the program and fixed the system for new borrowers, but borrowers under the previous program were left with ruined credit and continued harassment from debt collectors.

I call on the Canadian Government to apologize to the borrowers affected by this fiasco and make amends.

Unfortunately the Liberal government is again clobbering the Education system with their upcoming changes to International Student Visas. Yes, there's a problem, but instead of a well thought out plan, they have pulled the emergency brake on the train causing a derailment. This has introduced unprecedented instability for both private and public education institutions who serve both international and local students.

Universities can't plan. I've heard of courses being cut because the government has no process in place for universities to send the newly required acceptance letters to the government.

This means that students who have been accepted can not attend courses that start in the summer 2024 semester. With cut sections, current Canadian students will have trouble getting courses, and may have to switch to part-time which changes their enrollment status and might trigger repayment of their loans or ineligibility for funding. I've seen this before. It wreaks havoc on the student loan borrowers.

Again, the Liberal government has messed up the education environment. Will the new system needed in a rush for the acceptance letters be the new Arrivecan scandal?

I call on the government to implement a slower phased in approach and delay the requirement of the acceptance letters until a process is in place to submit these letters.


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paulaffleck View Drop Down
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Joined: 26/September/2007
Location: Canada
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote paulaffleck Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Hard lesson learned
    Posted: 11/October/2007 at 5:43pm
Here's my "story"...

After a decade in university, changing majors a couple of times, taking a year off, then going back for a graduate degree, I settled in Toronto with well over $60,000 in debt, $18,000 of it being a private loan.  After over three years in Toronto, and a series of poor lifestyle choices, I had defaulted on three of those loans, and also owed CCRA both GST and income tax arrears.  A real mess.  Quite honestly, the cost of debt servicing and the cost of living in Toronto, combined, began to make my situation unchangeable.

Basically, I hit a kind of "rock bottom", when I realized that, absent some serious lifestyle changes, and some serious cost reductions, I would never climb out of debt, much less save for retirement.  A scary proposition.

I chose to move to a less "sexy" city (a "905" bedroom community), with higher pay and at least one-third cheaper in terms of living costs.  Through living more like a student than I was when I was actually a student, and systematically denying myself certain "wants", I've managed to decrease the debt to about $35,000 in a short while. 

My point is that it took a severe lifestyle change, to wrest back control of my financial life.  I've come to the conclusion that, no matter what your income is, if you can't live frugally, financial burden will always haunt you.

Of course, this only works if your education gets you a relatively high paying job.  But - - there are a lot of broke professionals out there, and there are a lot of well-off "lower middle income" families, because some professionals never learnt to manage their finance....

My 2 cents...

Paul

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