I have an old student loan that I defaulted on about 15 years ago… I currently starting to get my life back in order after a long battle with addiction, so for the longest time paying my student loan or filing my income tax were the least of my concerns. 
I spent the day on the phone starting the process, I talked to CRA today about getting my last 10 years of T4s and will have to file returns for those years.  The second step was finding out the status of my student loans, obtained in the early 90s…talked to NSLC who referred me to CRA.  CRA was able to tell me what the balance of my CSL was the last time they tried any collection action, about 15K, but told me I had to call Service Canada to get the current balance, which
I imagine it is much higher with interest.  I was on hold with Service Canada for about 45 minutes, so I just left them a message.  If I’d been filing taxes I imagine what I was due to get back would have gone to pay off my loans.  Doing a guesstimation, I would have probably
been owed over 15k or more in returns over the last 10 years.  I alternated between a few years of making 40k to 50k and paying into a pension and years of being homeless and having
zero income… my income over the last 5 years has been 65k, zero, zero, 40k and
12k.  

I want to know if it will be as simple as this… I find out from Service Canada how much I currently owe, file my taxes and find out how much I’m owed, subtract that from CSL total and pay or make payment arrangements on the difference.

If that’s it, it won’t be all that painful… I have no other debt or assets for that matter, I don’t even own the clothes on my back, I’m living with a friend and luckily he’s the same size.  I’m back to earning 60k this year and without an addiction eating up my income I should be able to pay it off soon enough.

Is there anything I’m missing… I know there is a provincial portion of the loan, but I paid that off the year after I left school so the only loan I have is the CSL.