Has anyone been approved for CSL (canada student loan) disability?

-Emma

No. Under HRDC's definition of disability, people pretty much have to die in order to have their student loans forgiven. My case is a good example; in 2003 I got a life-threatening brain virus that was within 24 hours of being fatal. I was hospitalized for 5 months, and actually had to be taught how to eat and how to walk again. For the first while, physicians had to feed me pureed food like infants have, and I was "unable to follow simple commands." Physicians officially stated and recorded that I had permanent disability, and that I could "never be expected to work again." Because of that virus, I'll never be able to drive again, I have prosopagnosia (inability to recognize people's faces, even direct family and my own face), visual agnosia, retrograde and anterograde amnesia, auditory cognitive deficit, learn at 1/6th the pace I did prior to the infection, English vocabulary reduced to a grade 10 level...the list goes on. After my brain virus, I didn't even know which courses I had taken or where I was working. Despite all of this though, HRDC won't even forgive the interest they charged on my student loan while I was in the hospitals. Altogether, unless you die, you have pretty much no hope of having your student loan forgiven.

Rob

My friend says the CSL Disability form looks almost identical to the CPP Disability form. (Both programs are administered by HRDC, so it is not surprising.)

In order to qualify for CPP, it is hard to qualify -- and some disabling conditions are more "respected" than others.

For example, when i was in nursing school, we had a patient that applied for CPP. This person had no hands and no leg from Diabetes -- so THREE of the limbs were useless.

Doctors were had scheduled the removing of the remaining leg. Patient was in Kidney Failure (end-stage) from the years of Diabetes, which means Dialysis 3x/wk.

The Kidney Failure meant that poisons build up in the blood which cause heart, organ and brain damage. (Brain is being poisoned, so people go crazy with psychotic symptoms, etc).

This person was still considered EMPLOYABLE.

It was only until the person was diagnosed with imminent BLINDNESS that they were approved.

Later I found from others that, yes, blindness is almost always approved by CPP.

I think there are people who have so many conditions, though, that they are not able to earn enough to repay.

My program was supposed to earn me $25-50/hr.

I'd be lucky to get a job at all, if i were honest about my injuries.

I was accepted for disability as I had to also quit university and. I had a disease called spinal Noises. Sounds easy BUT some how my loan went to collections and for the last ten or more years. I have been sending my "proof" to student loans and Ontario Student Loan via CBCL collections. I do not know who is in need of the proof The calls will quit for awhile and then out of nowhere the collection agency starts. I have moved from Ontario to Saskatchewan . Started do my social work degree (BSW) it was once indicated to me that I owed for my Masters degree on the first year and that CBCL is just following default loans .I get to hear the recordings off and on. I feel that some how they think they have made a mistake which they haven't( (I am getting worse health wise) but that some how I am going to be cured and some one wants to know. Even though I have been forgiven I am still not and that any given moment the calls will start and they start right where they ended. MeSsages will be the same and calls all day. I will be looking for my Folder to fax to them again and asking what is this about calling who ever to get them to stop .I am getting older as I was a older student when I started I wonder if they will call after I am dead. They have ,made sure I do not have any credit but when you are disabled you have no credit to start with and maybe when I am old I will like those calls as they will remind me of a day when I was younger as they do now. One question I will never know Have I been forgiven?