Tell Ottawa what you think about student loans

Online feedback on Canada Student Loans Program due before your first midtermss

MAGALLY ZELAYA, STAFF

Students and the public alike have until Sept. 28 to share their opinions and suggestions for improving the Canadian Student Loan Program on a new online survey. Human resources and social development minister Monte Solberg announced the launch of the public consultation on Sept. 7.

“We want to hear a broad range of views from students, parents and others on how to best modernize, simplify and administer the Canada Student Loans Program,” Solberg said in a statement posted on the department’s website. Solberg will lead the review of the financial assistance program.

UMSU president Garry Sran said “It is a positive step to hear students’ voices on what can be done to change the system.” As it stands, the Canadian student loan debt currently exceeds $12.5 billion, according to the Canadian Federation of Students.

An overhaul to the student financial aid system is long overdue, said Sran. “It hasn’t changed much in the last few years, other than the amount of debt that students have been accruing.”

A review of the Canada Student Loan Program was called for in the 2007 federal budget. The budget also announced a 40 per cent increase in investment that is intended to improve the nation’s post-secondary system. This increase, which will take effect in 2008-2009, will be the first significant increase in more than 10 years.

The survey is one of the first steps the government has taken to hear the views of the public as part of the review called for by the 2007 budget— a fact that has not gone unnoticed by Julian Benedict, co-founder of the Coalition for Student Loan Fairness (CSLF).

“In a sense, we’re happy that the program is now public, but we’re disappointed that it took this long for that to happen,” commented Benedict.

The lack of publicity surrounding the three-week survey also has Benedict concerned. “The news release went out at 7:30 on a Friday night — there was no notice given to anyone,” he pointed out. “I think it’s quite late in the game. Student groups have very little time to mobilize people to tell their stories.”

Benedict also pointed to the difficulty of notifying the 990,000 student loan borrowers across Canada of the survey. “It [will be] a challenge to get it out to as many students as possible.” Especially, he added, as many of those borrowers are no longer students.

Since the commencement of the coalition in April the CSLF has collected over 1,000 signatures on its online petition. The petition seeks support for the coalition’s eight-point plan for reform of the student loan program.

“Our own investigations have yielded a lot of complaints and concerns,” explained Benedict. “The first thing that needs to happen is that they need to integrate loans provincially and federally. Because right now we have borrowers who have loans from two or three places.”

Sran, meanwhile, is hopeful for “an announcement of a national system of needs-based grants.”

The survey itself consits of three open-ended questions, which Sran said “are broad enough to get everyone’s opinion on what works and what doesn’t work.”

The survey also make a request for demographic imformation, but leaves those fields optional. Questions of whether you are a student, professor, or parent, for example, need not be answered.

Those taking part in the survey will also find an address to which they can send more detailed answers to the questions, if the allotted response fields do not provide enough space.

The changes that result from the survey’s recommendations are expected to be announced in the 2008 federal budget.