Quebec runs its own student aid system. The Aide financière aux études (AFE), part of the Ministère de l’Enseignement supérieur, administers the Loans and Bursaries Program, and Quebec students don’t receive Canada Student Loans or Canada Student Grants: the federal grants aren’t available to students from Quebec, the Northwest Territories or Nunavut, which have their own programs. That makes Quebec different from the rest of the country on almost every point: who lends the money, who charges interest, where you repay, and what help exists when you can’t.
This page covers the Quebec system on its own terms. How the federal and provincial loans fit together elsewhere, and each province’s interest rule, are on the student loans hub.
Loans first, then bursaries
The Loans and Bursaries Program funds full-time vocational training at the secondary level, college (CEGEP) and university studies for students who don’t have the financial resources. The AFE assesses your needs, and the order matters:
- You first receive a loan, which you repay after your studies.
- If the loan isn’t enough to cover your assessed needs, you can also receive a bursary, which you don’t repay.
So the bursary share grows with need: a student whose expenses are well above the loan amount gets more of their aid as a bursary. Part-time students have a separate Loans Program for Part-Time Studies. You apply each year you’re eligible. (Source: Québec.ca, advantages of Loans and Bursaries.)
Who pays the interest
| Period | Interest |
|---|---|
| During full-time studies | The government pays it for you; no payments |
| First 6 months after studies | Charged; you can pay it or add it to the loan |
| Repayment | The Bank of Canada preferential (prime) rate plus 0.50%, or a fixed rate agreed with your financial institution |
The federal decision to stop charging interest on Canada Student Loans doesn’t apply here, because a Quebec student loan isn’t a federal loan. Interest you pay on it earns a non-refundable tax credit, and your financial institution sends a statement each year for your tax return. (Sources: Québec.ca, repaying your student loan; Québec.ca, advantages of Loans and Bursaries.)
Repaying a Quebec student loan
You repay the loan to the financial institution you gave your guarantee certificate to when you started studying (Desjardins, BMO, Laurentian Bank, National Bank or RBC), not to the NSLSC, which handles federal loans in other provinces (NSLSC account guide). The institution sends you a notice six months after your studies end. At that point you have three choices:
- start repaying the loan and interest right away;
- pay only the interest until the six months are up, then start repaying;
- wait for the notice, in which case the interest from those six months is added to the loan.
If you go back to school at the same full-time or part-time status, you can stop repaying while you study; going from full-time to part-time studies doesn’t pause repayment. The student loan repayment calculator shows what a given balance and rate cost over time.
If you can’t make the payments
Quebec’s counterpart to the federal Repayment Assistance Plan is the Deferred Payment Plan. It reduces or pauses your payments for six months per application, and the government pays the interest for that period on your behalf. To qualify you must be in a precarious financial situation, have stopped studying more than six months ago and finished within the last 10 years, and not have declared bankruptcy or made a consumer proposal; the plan covers at most 60 months in total. You can apply up to six months retroactively. (Source: Québec.ca, Deferred Payment Plan.)
If you stop paying, the financial institution transfers the file to the AFE’s Collection Department, which asks for a repayment agreement. From then on you can’t use the Deferred Payment Plan, your Quebec tax refunds and solidarity tax credits are applied to the loan without notice, and you lose access to the Loans and Bursaries Program unless you reach an agreement. The federal system’s version of these steps is in what happens if you can’t pay your student loan.
The 15% loan remission
Quebec’s Loan Remission Program reduces the loan for a program of study by 15% if you studied full-time and finished within the prescribed number of terms and years. You must also have received a bursary from the Loans and Bursaries Program in every award year of the program.
- College technical programs: a bursary each year and completion on time.
- University: a bursary each year and an undergraduate program completed on time, which can also bring remission on a loan for pre-university college studies. Graduate and doctoral programs qualify only if you also received remission for your undergraduate program.
You have three years after the end of the program to apply, with your last transcript marked “Program Completed”. The remission is paid to your financial institution against the loan, and Revenu Québec doesn’t treat it as taxable income. (Source: Québec.ca, remission of your student loan debt.)
The remission is the only broad reduction of a Quebec student loan; occupation-based forgiveness programs in other provinces and the federal one for Canada Student Loans are compared in student loan forgiveness in Canada. Saving ahead in an RESP (where Quebec adds its own incentive to the federal grant) is compared with borrowing in RESP vs student loans.