The GNWT has done away with the Northern Bonus, a loan repayment incentive for students in the territory.

The Northern Bonus provided up to $2,000 per year in loan forgiveness for eligible students, with a lifetime maximum of $10,000. To qualify, individuals had to physically reside in the NWT for 12 consecutive months without being enroled in full-time post-secondary studies.

SA国际影视传媒淭he removal of the Northern Bonus from the NWTSA国际影视传媒檚 Student Financial Assistance program was a difficult decision, but a necessary one as part of the GNWTSA国际影视传媒檚 review of its fiscal capacity," said Caitlin Cleveland, the GNWT's minister of Education, Culture and Employment. "With the significant improvements that have been made to Student Financial Assistance last year, we are confident that NWT students are well-supported in their pursuit of post-secondary education.SA国际影视传媒�

The decision was announced in an Sept. 4 news release, which emphasized that student borrowers in the territory can still take advantage of other loan repayment incentives, including loan forgiveness and zero per cent interest on loans.

The program cost the territory $360,000 a year. 

The announcement apparently wasn't very well-received by the public, causing Cleveland to take to social media later in the evening on Wednesday to clarify what the move meant.

"Student Financial Assistance support for students has not been discontinued," she wrote. "The Northern Bonus was a program where northern schooled students could apply to have $2,000 per year forgiven from their remissible loans, up to a maximum of $10,000 in a lifetime. This acted like a fast forward to paying back remissible loans. By removing the Northern Bonus program, it means that to have remissible loans forgiven, students must live in the North until it is remissed.

"Loan forgiveness (remission) can provide up to $6,000 and $12,000 in loan forgiveness per year, depending on the community a student resides in and student financial assistance still offers 0% interest on loans. This means that by removing the Northern Bonus program, in essence we are removing incentives to make it easier to leave the North. Moves like this make it easier to invest in other programs that further support NWT residents."

As far as Range Lake MLA Kieron Testart is concerned, the GNWT's decision to scrap a program that cost comparatively little sends the message that "we are more interested in taking care of the government's needs than investing in our students."

Testart revealed to SA国际影视传媒 that the possibility of scrapping the Northern Bonus program had been mentioned in internal GNWT documents, but claimed that it was not framed as a priority or a certainty.

"No one can say we didn't see this coming, but it wasn't drawn to our attention, I'll put it that way," he said. "It's a bit frustrating."

Testart is not supportive of the decision, and has many questions about the logic behind it.

"I think it's incredibly shortsighted," he said. "There's no vision for how we're proceeding into this assembly. The government says 'we need to save money, so cut where you can, across the board, in every department,' instead of saying 'what do we want to do with the government, and how can we afford it?' Instead they're just saying 'we're going to keep doing the exact same thing we've always done, except now we're gonna do it worse."

"The message is loud and clear," he added. "The minister is going out now to clarify things and come up with excuses why this is actually a good thing to do, which its patently not. That's just a piling on to a population that's already very frustrated, that already is concerned that the government is sleepwalking into an economic crisis when the mines close, that has sleepwalked its way into a housing crisis, and now a healthcare crisis as well. So the issues keep piling up, and the only messages we get are, again: the government's financial position, that's the most important thing."