TORONTO Starting April 1, the interest rate has been set to zero per cent for the federal portion of student loans, but activists say that s not enough to support recent graduates, many of whom continue to struggle to find jobs as the pandemic persists. The proposal to drop the interest rate is included in Bill C-14, which sets out to implement measures included in the fall economic update. While that bill has yet to pass the House of Commons, the National Student Loans Services Centre (NSLSC) has already implemented the interest moratorium, which will last until March 31, 2022. Patty Facy, who graduated from the University of Toronto last year with a Master of Information degree, said the moratorium is too little, too late. Facy is part of the #FreezeTheNSLSC campaign, started by recent graduates calling on the federal government to freeze student loan repayments during the pandemic.
Chris Young/The Canadian Press
Some student loan recipients are potentially facing late penalties and hefty payments
due to glitches with a federal program aimed at debt relief, leaving them seeking answers from an overloaded call centre.
The federal government froze student loan payments for six months as a relief measure during the pandemic. At the same time, it put on hold the Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP), an existing program that enables recent graduates to reduce or suspend payments, based on their family income. When the freeze on student loan payments officially lifted at the end of September, those who qualified for the assistance plan had to once again apply. But some of those individuals are now finding their accounts frozen and their reapplications in limbo because the National Student Loan Service Centre (NSLSC), which administers the program, is overwhelmed.