CTV.ca News Staff

Canadians who have pursued post-secondary studies now owe the federal government $13 billion in outstanding loans, according to new figures from the Canadian Federation of Students.

The CFS says Canada Student Loan debt increases by $1.2 million per day and will cross the $13 billion mark on Wednesday.

A debt clock featured on the CFS webpage shows the Canada Student Loan debt inching toward the $13 billion mark in real time.

CFS national chairperson Katherine Giroux-Bougard told CTV.ca Wednesday said the government must do more to help stem the growing levels of Canadian student debt.

"What the priority of the government should be is really to make post-secondary education affordable," she said.

Being saddled with such debt, she said, leaves Canadian students making choices they shouldn't have to make.

Studies have shown that "student loan applications reduce the ability of new graduates to start families, work in public service careers, invest in other assets, volunteer, or even just take a lower paying job in their own field to get a foot in the door," Giroux-Bougard said.

"So, it changes peoples' life choices and career choices," she added.

Her organization advocates having the federal government provide more money to the students through the Canada Social Transfer, rather than the Canada Student Loans Program. This would allow the government to work with the provinces to reduce university tuition fees and claw back overall student debt, she said.

The CFS says the $13-billion figure does not include $5 billion students owe to provinces, nor does it include any debt they owe to banks, credit companies and their parents.

According to the Human Resources and Social Development Canada website, the federal government's Canada Student Loans Program has offered $28.1 billion in loans to more than 3.8 million students since the program was founded in 1964.

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Let me start out by saying that I am one of those Canadians. I struggle every month to make my OSAP payments and have even had to reduce them for 6 months as I couldn't afford to pay it. I wouldn't have even bothered with student loans had the tuition not been so damn ridiculous in this country. The fact that most people even need to get a student loan to pay for school means that these institutions are gouging the heck out of students.

The whole thing is a joke in my opinion. From day one we are taught that if a person wants to be successful, we should stay in school. School is the key to everything yet only those that can afford it are afforded that luxury. For those that can't, they must take out money that they will be paying off for many years, whether they graduate or not and for that, I think the system needs to be changed. The European system seems to work and it is free, but for some reason, in Canada, education is seen more as a business than an institution of higher learning. Everything is about profits. I haven't noticed any improvement in the quality of education. I've been in college and university and this is going back to 1998; in Ontario, which during the Mike Harris years suffered in all areas. Tuition continues to go up and up, along with everything else in life, yet the quality stays the same. It's bull shit, pure and simple.

One thing that stood out in the article was

What the priority of the government should be is really to make post-secondary education affordable

Fair enough and that is a minimalistic approach in my opinion and it doesn't go far enough. As I've said, the best way to make it affordable is to make it free. Those that want to go to school would still go and those that do not want to will not. But it is all about money and those that went to school when it was actually affordable are now the same ones who are in our politics, in our businesses proclaiming that the system needs to be changed, but not to the way I would like to see it. Instead, they want to see it privatized where money and profits are more important than students education. Kind of the way it is now, but only worse.

With ancillary fees, which the sneaky bastards were sued over, students are paying even more money let alone the outrageous cost of text books. It is just crazy the amount of debt that students are acquiring and they haven't even started in the work force yet. What I see all to often is that students coming out of school are looking for a job in their field, yet they end up working dead end and low paying jobs. With the economy the way it is now, how are people going to pay their student loans off, let alone any other debts they have? Many, and I mean many students will be defaulting within the next few years, it is inevitable.

Can anyone say bail out!!

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