The Standing Committee on Government Operations recommends that the Department of Finance give consideration to reporting student loan remissions in another schedule in the public accounts, separate from the schedule reporting bad debt write offs and forgiveness.
With respect to the protection of students' privacy, the committee believes that the practice of identifying students by their initials and surname only might further enhance privacy. As well, the committee notes that, in a number of previous years' public accounts, forgiveness and write-offs have been published as aggregate amounts, which would appear to be inconsistent with the government's insistence that loan remissions must be reported as individual amounts. If it is possible for the GNWT to publish these amounts as totals, then it should hold that the same should be possible with respect to the total amount of student loan remissions. This brings us to the committee's next recommendation: