Another Letter to Cogliati!

Mr. Dave Cogliati     August 18, 2002
Director General
HRDC Student Loans Program

Again your department is incorrectly applying regulations with regard to disability claims. Your staff member advised me that she will not include a student loan payment amount in the comparison to the Superintendent?s Surplus Income table. Please correct this error immediately.
The section clearly states that Net Income is to be used, less among other things (g) any other debt where a stay of proceedings has been lifted by the court, and a recourse authorized. A recourse was authorized by my trustee. That payment amount was approximately $640 per month.
Furthermore, It makes no sense to evaluate my situation without determining the minimum payment required to repay the loan. At present, you have evaluated my situation as if I do not have to pay back the loan which goes against the wording in the Act.

Under your use of this table, you are using $1602 as a figure regardless of the required payment. Since Student loans are not discharged, the payment should be subtracted from the net income to arrive at the threshold as per the directive, which I clearly meet. In my case the minimum payment assuming a 10 year payback period and an interest rate of 5% per annum is $275 on my Canada Student Loan and $45 on my Ontario Student Loan, the total of which is $320. This amount should be deducted from the $1604 as well as other expenses already described to you.

Furthermore, this practice of including the payment has been established in your Interest Relief Program, where the similar threshold is calculated using the base rate and including the client?s payment. This interpretation is further re-inforced by the wording of the Canada Student Financial Assistance Act that deals with disability. It describes the criteria of ?is or will be unable to repay the student loan without exceptional hardship? You have incorrectly evaluated my case on the basis of not having to repay the loan, This needs to be corrected.

On a further note, your staff has now twice accused me of not making my OPD payments, which I have and are recorded in the OPD program records. It is clear your staff do not understand the OPD program and therefore should not be making such libelous statements.

If needed, please seek a legal opinion on this issue. Sue Canadien advised me that the have been using this method for over twenty years. If that is the case, then your staff have been doing it incorrectly for twenty years and need to immediately correct it and revisit all the cases that were denied. Clearly, if your staff had correctly processed my application back in the spring, with the correct interpretation of the laws and regulations, my loans would now be forgiven.

     I trust that, as in the past, you will address these concerns immediately.
Mark O?Meara

Cc:      Royal Bank Credit Management and Recovery
Canadian Press,   Jane Stewart, Minister