When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the extension of certain COVID-19 Advantages on February 19th, his reasoning was simple: “This crisis is not over yet. So also our support for you. ”
Words of comfort – as long as you are not one of hundreds of thousands of Canadians Administration of student loan debts during the pandemic. If so, consider yourself an unwilling cash cow for the federal government.
If anything, it’s the Trudeau government Rejection Providing student loan borrowers with ongoing COVID-19 relief points to a larger problem that plagued post-secondary education for the past few decades: student debt is profitable. According to the latest available data from Statistics Canada due to be updated later this year, every second Canadian Graduate with government-owed student loans averaging $ 26,000 – generating Hundreds of millions of dollars a year in the interest on student loans.
But not only our government benefits from it. DH Corp. (now Finastra, a UK-based, privately owned US company) paid tens of millions of dollars a year by the federal government to administer the National Student Loan Service Center (NSLSC). Tens of millions of dollars a year lost to our economy are being spent keeping Canada’s student loan debt alive.
Canada’s moratorium on payments and interest on student loans completed almost half a year ago, on September 30th. The country’s 2020 post-secondary class has never benefited – all new graduates are given a six-month grace period to repay federal loans, and theirs overlapped with the COVID-19 freeze.
The impact of the pandemic on new students alone is worrying. This is not only appreciated by Statistics Canada every third student has lost his internship Last spring, due to COVID-19, federal agency also forecast the 2020 class could lose $ 25,000 or more over the next five years due to the pandemic. Many new graduates have failed to qualify and have not seen the summer jobs promised to them after graduation WE scandal unfolds. Most of the $ 9 billion government aid package was made available to undergraduate and graduate students last year still has to be spent.
Nevertheless, the collection of the loan payments continues in full. And while the NSLSC one Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP) for anyone who has difficulties it completely collapsed under the weight of the pandemic. search #nslsc or #freezethenslsc on Twitter, and you can find tons Stories payments that are billed when they shouldn’t have been, hours of waiting while trying to reach someone who can help, and other technical problems that cause more problems than they can solve. Also, keep in mind that the assistance plan is an opt-in program – which means that every six months borrowers in trouble have no choice but to repeat the tedious application process.
An interim solution would put an end to all of this: freezing payments and interest on student loans during COVID-19. So why does our government insist on collecting student loan payments during a global pandemic? Since when have debt-ridden graduates and unemployed Canadians been such lucrative cash cows?
It is ineffective to continue to identify student loan debt as an individual problem while ignoring the systemic changes that have led to greater reliance on student loans. The public definition of Canada’s post-secondary system over the past few decades and the subsequent rise in tuition fees and individual education costs are well documented. The stories of how to earn enough with a summer job to pay a year’s cost of education, mostly told by older Canadians, are a distant past.
Instead, student loan debt is preventing younger Canadians from reaching home, retirement, investment, and other generation milestones that are designed to fuel the Canadian economy. The student loan debt, ironically, closes many of the doors that a good education and well-paying job should normally open.
Whether or not you agree to cancel Canada’s student debt, a loan payment and interest freeze is far from complete. It’s a minimal relief in terms of time – much-needed time for young graduates and underemployed Canadians to find the financial foundation they need to get into work and participate in the Canadian economy as we continue with COVID-19 fight.
Student loan debt ironically closes many of the doors that a good education and well-paying job should normally open, writes @pattyfacy. #cdnpoli #FreezeTheNSLSC
Without a student loan freeze, jokes like “My biggest concern are the young people” (as Labor Secretary Carla Qualtrough was quoted as saying in a December). op-ed) sound hollow if the government continues to ignore the ongoing pressures affecting the very people they speak for.
Trudeau’s government had an opportunity to take action on November 24 when: a Move by NDP MP Heather McPherson to extend loan payments freeze decided unanimously in the House of Commons. Instead, the radio silence of the Liberal government has continued, and the silent collection of loan payments speaks volumes about our current government’s priorities: profits on students, college graduates, and student loan borrowers.
Patty Facy is a Toronto-based digital services designer and organizer of the # FreezeTheNSLSC campaign.
