Loan program blamed for leaving refugees in financial trouble to be reworked
OTTAWA — The Liberals are finally overhauling a program that provides loans to refugees to cover the cost of their resettlement to Canada, but they’re stopping short of demands the system be scrapped entirely.
Instead, the government is proposing to eliminate interest charges on all new loans and give new borrowers more time to pay them back, according to a notice of the pending changes posted online by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.
“Eliminating interest charges and extending the repayment period as well as the period before the loan becomes repayable will give resettled refugees more time to focus on their integration, without needing to give immediate attention to loan repayments,” the notice says.
Those who currently have a loan would not accumulate any further interest but their repayment schedule would remain the same; recipients must begin paying back the loan 30 days after landing in Canada and have between one and six years to repay, depending on the amount.