From February 8 to 12, the British Columbia Federation of Students (BCFS) participated in The Week of Action, a week-long effort that was part of the two-year Knock Out Interest campaign. Through the campaign, the BCFS—along with 40 student unions across Canada, including the Camosun College Student Society—is calling on the federal government to eliminate interest on federal student loans. A failure to do so could have effects on the economy that last years, says BCFS chairperson Tanysha Klassen, who feels the BCFS is getting close to having a victory with this campaign.
“[The federal government has] even released a costing note saying how much it would cost to eliminate interest on student loans; it really just feels like it’s the next step,” she says. “When you look at the amount of student debt that there is in Canada, it’s clear that charging interest is not providing an incentive for people to pay back their loans.”
Klassen says that relinquishing loans would be “a drop in the bucket” compared to the larger scope of student debt, which leads people to not be able to participate in the economy.
“It is the least that the government could do for students at this time,” she says.
Klassen says that she’s worried about students having to quit school because of debt load, and, by extension, not being able to contribute as much to the economy in the long term.
“We’re not asking to eliminate student debt all together,” she says. “As great as that would be, that’s not what we’re asking.”
With in-person campaigning all but gone because of COVID-19, Klassen says she isn’t worried about trudging through the noise of social media, because students care about this issue.
“[We’re] really focusing on the public presence of the campaign,” she says, “rather than just focusing on getting support from students, because we know that students care about this.”
As part of the campaign, the Douglas College Students’ Union put together an open video letter addressed to the federal government. Klassen says that in the video everyone from post-secondary students to middle-school teachers and parents call on the government to end interest on federal student loans.
“The video’s gotten a lot of attention,” she says.
Klassen adds that, throughout the pandemic, students and young people have gotten much less than everybody else in the country, pointing to the Canada Emergency Student Benefit being less than the Canada Recovery Benefit. Camosun College Student Society (CCSS) external executive Quinn Cunningham echoes Klassen’s sentiment, saying that in “economically dire” times, student debt impacts people even more and prevents the economy from being able to properly recover.
“[The federal government needs to] follow in the footsteps of not only our province eliminating interest on their portion of the student loans, but the other provinces, and implement that federally, because… it becomes a barrier in so many ways,” says Cunningham. “But also when students graduate, they have to put off so many tremendous life decisions.”
Those decisions—like buying a house, a car, or starting a family—put money back into our economy, says Cunningham.
“If you think about the average that students who borrowed have to pay [in interest], which is an average in Canada of $4,000, that’s easily a semester of tuition they could have paid for,” says Cunningham.
Klassen says the whole point of student loans is to provide incentive to pay them back, but as debt loads approach unpayable for many, it starts to impact quality of life for Canadians for years and generations to come.
“We’re asking for the removal of what is essentially a tax on people that can’t pay for their education upfront,” she says.
See knockoutinterest.ca for more information on the campaign.