Juno News - Majority of immigrants not making payments on gov loans

00:00:00.000 Two-thirds of immigrants, including some with permanent residency, were not paying their

00:00:09.920 monthly minimum payments on an outstanding $150 million worth of tax-funded immigration loans.

00:00:17.820 Alberta's education minister is pushing back against claims that the province's ban on

00:00:22.200 sexually graphic materials constitutes a quote, book ban.

00:00:25.980 U.S. President Donald Trump's executive order recognizing only two genders now means Canadians

00:00:31.980 can no longer mark their gender as X on new or renewed Nexus travel cards.

00:00:38.000 Hello Canada, it's Wednesday, August 6th, and this is the True North Daily Brief.

00:00:42.440 I'm Cosmin Georgia.

00:00:43.600 And I'm Alex Sultan.

00:00:44.620 We've got you covered with all the news you need to know.

00:00:47.240 Let's discuss the top stories of the day and the True North exclusives you won't hear anywhere else.

00:00:52.020 Two-thirds of immigrants, including permanent residents, were not making minimum monthly

00:00:59.860 payments on an outstanding $150 million in taxpayer-funded immigration loans.

00:01:05.480 These loans carry zero interest and terms most Canadians could only dream of.

00:01:09.960 According to access to information records obtained by True North, federal officials reported that

00:01:15.440 only 36% of recipients of the immigration loans program were making minimum monthly payments

00:01:22.080 as of March 31st, 2023, down sharply from before the COVID pandemic.

00:01:28.280 Immigration officials wrote, quote,

00:01:30.280 Before the pandemic, 59% of clients with outstanding loans were making required minimum

00:01:35.760 monthly payments towards their loans compared to 36% at March 31st, 2023.

00:01:42.200 This translates to a total loan payment decrease from $20 million in 2021-2022 to $17 million

00:01:51.320 in 2022-2023.

00:01:54.320 That means 64% of immigration loan holders are possibly delinquent on their repayments.

00:02:00.540 It is unclear how many of those failing to make minimum monthly payments have entered deferred

00:02:05.400 repayment or defaulted entirely on their loans.

00:02:08.800 Attempts by True North to receive further clarification from Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada

00:02:14.580 went unanswered.

00:02:15.820 By comparison, the average delinquency rate for Canadian consumers with non-mortgage debt

00:02:21.280 sits at around 1.60%.

00:02:24.040 According to Equifax data for Quarter 1 at 2025, even among young adults aged 26 to 35, one of

00:02:32.200 the riskiest borrowing groups, delinquency averages only 2.37%.

00:02:37.300 The documents also reveal that outstanding immigrant debt owed to Canadian taxpayers ballooned to over $150 million,

00:02:45.480 nearly double the $80 million owed the year prior.

00:02:49.520 So when I was looking over these documents, I thought to myself that any bank that operated

00:02:55.620 this way would have immediately been out of business because the amount of consumers of

00:03:03.260 these loans who are not making the minimum monthly payment, and I have to elaborate a little bit here

00:03:09.260 because to understand what type of loan this is, so it's a zero interest loan, first of all.

00:03:16.600 And when you actually look at the terms of the repayment schemes that these loans are handed out,

00:03:23.780 they're up to eight years.

00:03:25.280 So over, I think, $4,000 or $5,000, you get up to eight years to pay back, let's say you get a $5,000 loan,

00:03:35.220 at 0% interest rate, that's a monthly payment of about $50.

00:03:40.400 So are we to believe that new immigrants who take these loans come to Canada, have the means to live here, 1.00

00:03:48.220 are not able to make a $50 monthly payment on a $5,000 loan over eight years?

00:03:54.120 It's just outrageous.

00:03:55.500 And as the article points out, these are terms that most Canadians could only dream of.

00:04:00.780 Like, they're literally unheard of.

00:04:02.500 And for the government to operate a program that most banks would shut down over,

00:04:08.680 like, if every bank in the world operated on these types of margins,

00:04:13.140 there would be a global financial crisis.

00:04:15.780 So I don't understand how it's acceptable for a government to operate this way,

00:04:21.140 whereas private businesses and banks operate at such a lower percentage of people actually being potentially delinquent on loans.

00:04:29.420 Even, like, 2% delinquency rates on credit card loans is pretty high for a bank,

00:04:35.400 and they start to get worried when consumers are not able to pay at that level.

00:04:40.060 But when you have over 60%, two-thirds, a majority of your clients not making minimum monthly payments,

00:04:49.580 I don't think you can even call that a loan,

00:04:51.880 because the chances of actually recouping your money are slim to none.

00:04:57.860 But Alex, why are so many immigrants so behind on these loans,

00:05:03.540 granted to them by taxpayers to fund their immigration process in Canada?

00:05:08.920 Well, Cosmin, it's a bit of a difficult question to answer because, as with any loan delinquency,

00:05:14.800 the reason that a person is unable to pay a loan is pretty much as unique as the borrower.

00:05:20.140 What I can tell you from my own experience in finance is that one of the reasons I think that people are less likely

00:05:26.700 to prioritize paying back these loans is it's a little-known fact in Canada that, typically speaking,

00:05:33.300 government loans do not appear on credit bureaus.

00:05:36.560 It's not exactly clear why that is.

00:05:39.200 Sorry, they appear, but they don't report.

00:05:41.940 So the credit bureau agencies, the two principal ones in Canada being Equifax and TransUnion,

00:05:47.580 will report student loans.

00:05:49.240 But if you pay your student loans every single month without error,

00:05:54.460 it doesn't do anything for your credit score.

00:05:56.260 We've learned this just through the law of deduction and looking over credit reports in the bank.

00:06:00.000 So many, many borrowers will come in for their first mortgage,

00:06:03.700 and the only lending facility that they've ever had is a student loan.

00:06:08.780 And they will have a zero credit score.

00:06:11.040 So there's very, very little incentive for these individuals to pay off these loans judiciously,

00:06:19.780 you could say.

00:06:21.160 Also, it's worth mentioning that typically, I would assume most asylum seekers,

00:06:25.740 given that they're new to the country, don't have a credit score.

00:06:29.160 So you have a zero credit score.

00:06:31.320 And if you fail to pay back these loans, your credit score cannot go negative.

00:06:35.120 So putting that all into perspective, I assume that many of these people,

00:06:42.020 first of all, don't have much incentive to pay back the loans quickly.

00:06:45.340 And secondly, I don't know if they've been provided much guidance on how to pay back the loans.

00:06:50.160 And thirdly, also relevant to this story,

00:06:52.720 is the fact that Immigration Canada will not remove you from the country

00:06:56.700 if you fail to pay back these loans.

00:06:59.080 So once you account for all of those different factors,

00:07:01.320 it becomes clear why many new immigrants or, well, in this case, asylum seekers 0.90

00:07:07.000 are just not prioritizing paying back these loans.

00:07:11.280 They're likely prioritizing, you know, getting their feet on the ground

00:07:14.880 or perhaps they've left the country altogether

00:07:17.120 and they have no intention of paying them back at all.

00:07:22.480 Alberta Education Minister Demetrius Nicolaitis

00:07:25.640 is pushing back against what he calls misleading claims

00:07:28.300 from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association

00:07:30.420 that the province's ban on sexually graphic materials in school libraries

00:07:34.560 constitutes a, quote, book ban.

00:07:37.220 Nicolaitis wrote in a Sunday post on X, quote,

00:07:40.200 this op-ed is flagrantly incorrect.

00:07:42.700 This is not a book ban.

00:07:44.040 The government does not have the ability or desire to ban books.

00:07:47.740 Non-sexual content on topics like the human body and puberty is not restricted,

00:07:52.320 contrary to the incorrect reporting from the media.

00:07:54.580 Nicolaitis' remarks came in response to a July 29th op-ed posted in the Edmonton Journal,

00:08:00.380 co-authored by CCLA Executive Director Howard Sapers

00:08:03.880 and Fundamental Freedoms Director Anais Boussiers-McNickel,

00:08:07.660 which argued that the government's new rules amount to censorship.

00:08:10.660 The op-ed stated, quote,

00:08:12.140 Alberta's Minister of Education and Child Care recently issued an order

00:08:15.720 banning some books from all school libraries in the province.

00:08:18.540 This means that from September onwards,

00:08:20.280 classics such as George Orwell's 1984 and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale

00:08:24.900 will be banned from all school libraries for all students aged 6 to 18.

00:08:29.620 The CCLA leaders further misleadingly claimed the policy would also restrict access

00:08:34.080 to sexual health resources and coming-of-age stories such as

00:08:37.400 The Catcher in the Rye and The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

00:08:40.220 They wrote, quote,

00:08:41.120 So, Cosman, could you clarify for me?

00:09:07.000 You know, I'm not in Alberta.

00:09:08.580 Do you know what kind of books this legislation actually blocks?

00:09:12.800 Yeah, so several books were actually named when they first announced this policy.

00:09:18.320 Think books like Genderqueer, which is a so-called graphic novel

00:09:23.180 that features actual depictions of graphic sex acts.

00:09:29.020 And that's not literature.

00:09:30.900 That's just straight-up pornography.

00:09:33.200 And it's been sitting on school shelves,

00:09:35.680 sometimes available to kids as young as five years old.

00:09:39.640 And this legislation simply states that that type of material

00:09:44.560 is not allowed in schools, period.

00:09:47.560 So when the media publishes these op-eds crying about so-called book bans,

00:09:53.880 they're leaving out the reality that parents are actually the ones demanding this

00:09:59.600 because it was parents that prompted the Alberta government

00:10:02.860 to craft this legislation, not bureaucrats.

00:10:07.480 There was a whole survey that involved students, involved parents, and educators as well.

00:10:13.220 But you have activists and some activist librarians particularly

00:10:17.080 who are speaking out against this.

00:10:19.120 And the province actually asked the general public,

00:10:23.180 and families overwhelmingly said they don't want their kids exposed to books like Genderqueer.

00:10:28.640 There's another book also called Flamer,

00:10:31.720 and it includes graphic depictions of ejaculation. 0.50

00:10:36.120 There's books that have instances of pedophilia in it.

00:10:39.840 So this policy is about protecting children, period, and not silencing ideas.

00:10:45.740 It's about promoting the educational environment and having a healthy space

00:10:50.260 where students can discuss topics like sexuality, sex, and positive relationships

00:10:58.000 without being exposed to graphic depictions that would be unacceptable in any other circumstance.

00:11:06.620 And people don't realize this, that some of the books that are affected by this so-called ban,

00:11:14.260 by this policy that removes graphic sexual depictions from libraries,

00:11:18.760 you couldn't go to a municipal council meeting or a, you know, read them out loud in parliament.

00:11:25.040 So why, if we can't talk about these things or read word for word the depictions

00:11:30.840 in a public setting where adults are present,

00:11:35.600 why do we think, or rather, why do these activists think

00:11:39.560 that it should be acceptable for children to be exposed to this?

00:11:43.260 One argument that this op-ed and the writers make is they try to claim that it's about queer representation,

00:11:50.000 but that's not the case.

00:11:51.740 Alberta's not banning identity.

00:11:53.680 It's not saying, oh, you're not allowed to have queer representation in libraries.

00:11:59.960 That would require, you know, reversing things like Pride Month,

00:12:03.760 getting rid of Pride flags, which is simply absurd, and it's not happening.

00:12:08.280 Like, you just have to look at what's going on in Alberta to realize that that's not happening.

00:12:13.860 All schools have queer representation today.

00:12:16.480 It's banning explicit material, explicit sexual material.

00:12:21.040 So under this policy, you can have books that include, you know, LGBT people

00:12:28.100 and discusses their lives and relationships without zooming in on depictions of naked minors

00:12:36.660 as these books do outside of a, you know, biology class.

00:12:41.640 It's the setting isn't the same.

00:12:43.600 So I think people need to stop pretending it's all or nothing, that there's nuance to this.

00:12:49.400 And to claim that getting rid of this practice and these materials from school libraries

00:12:55.960 is the beginning of some dystopian nightmare is simply not true.

00:13:02.360 And it's just an exaggeration used for an effect by activists who I think just want this to keep going.

00:13:10.880 But this is simply just about setting standards and having public libraries and bookstores

00:13:18.000 be a place where children can educate themselves rather than be exposed to graphic sexual content.

00:13:28.780 Canadians can no longer mark their gender as the letter X on new or renewed Nexus travel cards

00:13:35.420 following a change tied to an executive order by U.S. President Donald Trump

00:13:39.780 that restricts federal recognition to only two genders, male and female.

00:13:44.960 The Canada Border Services Agency confirmed the policy update applies to all Nexus applicants

00:13:50.440 even if they hold a Canadian passport with an X designation.

00:13:54.160 Current Nexus cards issued with an X remain valid.

00:13:57.540 However, all future applications must align with U.S. gender identification rules

00:14:02.700 selecting either male or female designation.

00:14:06.040 CBSA spokesperson Rebecca Purdy in a statement said,

00:14:09.780 New applicants are able to apply using a passport with the X gender identifier.

00:14:15.320 However, they will be required to select male or female for the purposes of their Nexus membership.

00:14:20.860 The Nexus program is jointly administered by the CBSA and U.S. Customs and Border Protection

00:14:26.480 allowing pre-approved low-risk travelers to fast-track their travel between Canada

00:14:32.380 and the United States at certain border crossings.

00:14:35.440 Nexus card holders can use exclusive lanes at border crossings,

00:14:40.240 which include facial verification machines that hasten the entry process.

00:14:45.420 The CBSA said approximately 550 Nexus applications have been submitted using the X gender marker

00:14:51.860 between January 2022 and March 2025.

00:14:54.920 The U.S. will continue to accept Canadian passports with the X marker for general travel.

00:15:00.860 The bilateral nature of the Nexus program means eligibility criteria must satisfy the requirements of both governments.

00:15:08.340 Alex, we were talking about common sense earlier.

00:15:11.140 What is your take on Trump's policy of officially recognizing there being only two genders,

00:15:17.440 and how is this going to affect, you know, travel for Canadians?

00:15:21.180 I think that the impact to travel on Canadians is going to be fairly minimal,

00:15:26.160 and at least that's been the case so far.

00:15:28.140 So, according to Reuters, there have been no confirmed cases of Canadians being denied entry to the United States

00:15:34.340 because their passport listed an X gender marker,

00:15:37.900 or because their gender identity did not match their assigned sex at birth.

00:15:41.720 Global Affairs Canada has also confirmed that they have received no reports of entry denials on that basis.

00:15:48.300 Travel warnings issued by Canada indicate scrutiny of electronic devices and documentation,

00:15:53.760 and they mention that travelers should comply with U.S. questioning,

00:15:56.560 but denial related to gender marker mismatch has not been documented in publicly available reports,

00:16:02.420 according to Canadian travelers, Reuters, and Global Affairs Canada.

00:16:07.140 I will also add that this does seem, in my opinion, like very much a common sense decision.

00:16:12.660 When you book a flight, it requires you to pick a specific gender. 0.51

00:16:17.260 It does not give you the option to pick a non-binary option, depending on which airline you're flying with,

00:16:22.400 but from my experience, I have only seen the male and female options,

00:16:26.900 and from my understanding, one of the reasons for that policy is that in the extremely unlikely event

00:16:32.980 that there was a plane crash, knowing the gender of passengers helps them to identify those passengers post-mortem.

00:16:40.620 So it's really quite important for people to know what gender you are if you're flying on a plane

00:16:46.200 or if you're entering from another country.

00:16:48.520 It also helps to identify individuals who may have previous criminal convictions

00:16:52.600 or maybe a registered offender, particularly violent sex offenders.

00:16:56.660 And so I can see why the policy decision was made to ban X identifiers on passports for incoming Canadians.

00:17:04.520 But again, according to all of the evidence that we have,

00:17:06.860 the impact to Canadian travelers has been less than minimal.

00:17:10.560 It's been virtually nothing at all.

00:17:15.300 That's it for today, folks.

00:17:16.800 Thanks for tuning in.

00:17:17.660 You can stay on top of new episodes every weekday by subscribing to The Daily Brief on iTunes and Spotify.

00:17:23.580 Also, while you're at it, make sure to hit us with a five-star rating and please leave a review.

Juno News - August 06, 2025

Majority of immigrants not making payments on gov loans

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