In fact, the Canada student loans program supports 500,000 students who receive benefits, and it costs about $2.7 billion to $2.8 billion annually. The total outstanding loan portfolio as of March 31, 2016, was $18 billion, and the average loan at graduation was just over $12,000.
The way the loan repayment works, this government introduced changes in budget 2016 so that if you're earning less than $25,000, we don't try to recover the loan until you're earning a working wage, and then debt repayment schedules are negotiated.
If someone falls into default, there is a process with the Canada Revenue Agency in which, over a six-year period, we try to recover that debt. Only after six years, if we've been unsuccessful in recovering the debt, do we write it off. That's not the same as debt forgiveness. We're not forgiving the debt. We're simply removing it from our books. This is in keeping with accounting standards and an agreement with the Auditor General, where we want to project our real liabilities and the real likelihood of recovering costs.