Wonky/Unusual ARC letter: please advise!

I posted in the 'Urgent Help' forum without response, so I thought I'd try here.

Unsigned letter with no agent name attached from ARC in Victoria, BC said:
Creditor: GSLAC Scotiabank Std loan Amount: 36000
15 days from this date we will be forwarding this acct to an agent to an agent IN YOUR AREA.  This may affect your ability to obtain credit locally.  You may avoid this action by mailing the balance in full by the aforementioned date.  This is an attempt to collect a debt and any information obtained will be used for that purpose.  This communication is from a debt collector.  Govern yourself accordingly.

Yours truly,


Collection Officer
ARC Accounts Recovery Corporation
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What does this mean; what actions will/can they take on the 15th day = next wk?  Or are they selling the acct to another collection co.?
What can they do & how best to proceed?
I also don't get the line This may affect your ability to obtain credit locally because any credit check/issue in Ontario/anywhere else uses the same bureaus and procedures as anywhere else in Canada.

This relates to loan since 1998 Back in 2001, acct ended up in collection b/c I worked abroad so payments tended to arrive late due to postage time.  I attempted to verify actual amts and was bounced back & forth; Scotia said they had no info, wouldn't collect my payment b/c they had passed everything off to the agency.  Agency appeared to be inflating the actual amount/interest, said bank gave info but wouldn't provide any breakdowns, etc.  So I said I wasn't paying anything without verification, especially after the negative credit comments.  Apparently they own Nova collections which already put a negative comment on my report in '02 (regarding a smaller amt probably provincial portion).

Any input appreciated.

Hope the lawsuit does not materialize.  A few days ago, out of the blue, someone called asking for me pretending to be a mail service, starting off with "I have a package for..."  I said "who is this?" (because no postal service calls to deliver pkgs) then he turned agressive saying "this is ... from ARC, isn't this so-and-so speaking, you represent this person, well their lawyer better contact us, ..." I told him I didn't know what he was talking about & dropped the phone but he called back left a msg saying the my lawyer had better contact them by 5pm that day.  Another person from same firm tried calling a couple times since then but I say wrong# or do not take their calls.

Can I just ignore or write return-to-sender & drop the letter back in the mail?  I'm reluctant to contact them or acknowledge anything for few reasons:
1) Currently unemployed with no means to repay anything, least of all an unvalidated 36k in full.
2) This debt is not on my credit report and I do not wish to have it appear there.  The two 2002 negative comments refer to provincial portion and one of the comments is in the process of being removed as Ontario Ministry acknowledges that was a mistake. 
3) If this CSL 1998 debt is stats barred, I don't want to restart the clock. 

I would like to know what the consequences of being sued are.  Like I said, I don't have any money to give them, nothing to garnish/repossess, so is it jail then?