Government Operations committee  Before that six-year statute of limitations was in place, the Government of Canada was basically using whatever statute of limitations was in place in the student's province or territory of residence. Those statutes varied across the country. Some were as low as a two-year statut

Government Operations committee  It's early to evaluate. As I said, the repayment assistance plan has only been in place since the 2009-10 school year, so we haven't undertaken an evaluation yet. We intend to. We expect to find that it's made a significant difference in the ability of students with low incomes o

Government Operations committee  As Mr. Tsang said in his opening remarks, the vast majority of student loans are repaid to the government over the lifetime of the loan. The exact number is about 87.2%. Taking that another way, almost 13% of loans are not repaid. Of that amount, about 11% is written off, so a

Government Operations committee  We rely on the chief actuary in the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions to forecast for us whether there is an anticipated shift in that amount, either up or down. He is forecasting that for the foreseeable future the amount will stay roughly constant, so the p

Government Operations committee  How many loans do we have outstanding? The portfolio of outstanding direct student loans shifts on a day-to-day basis. As money comes in, obviously the amount of outstanding loans goes down, and as we disburse funds the amount goes up. But the outstanding balance is between $13 b

Government Operations committee  It has been in effect since 2003. One of the primary reasons the number of loans written off is increasing is that of course students are just going beyond the six-year statute of limitations as they get out of school, start the repayment process, and then—

Government Operations committee  Without getting into all the complexities of the accounting, the government does in fact make a prediction about the level of bad debt we anticipate over the course of a year. That amount appears in the estimates. However, because Canada student loans are crown assets, there has

Government Operations committee  Yes, you are on the right track. The estimates indicate that we are requesting a writeoff of about $149 million. Those writeoffs did occur over a three-year period, so 2008-09, 2009-10, and 2010-11. The last time Parliament was asked to agree to a writeoff of direct student loans

Government Operations committee  There is a whole range of options, beginning at the time a student first consolidates their loan. If the agreed terms are not workable for the student—they get into, say, financial difficulty—they can for a short period of time make interest-only payments, or they could renegotia