It seems that our Canadian neighbors are also struggling with the question of student loans. They have a student loan program that is fully funded by the Government. Before you get too excited, it has a default rate of nearly 25 percent and the government spends more money trying to collect on bad debt than the debt is worth, but that’s a different story.

The Canadian students want an ombudsman to help mediate disputes between the Canadian Student Loan Program and the borrowers. It seems that the problems in the Canadian plan are many and the solutions are few. (The Canadian plan, by the way, is similar to what the Kennedy crew proposes for student loan borrower in the US.) Students who can’t get the government to resolve problems are stuck because they have nowhere to turn.

Don’t fret. The US Federal student loan programs have an ombudsman already. The office was established in 1999 and now receives an average of 300 calls per week. If 300 calls per week is average, then the Ombudsman’s office gets nearly 16,000 calls per year. That, by the way, is to handle only the Federal student loan programs, about 11 percent of all student loans issued in the US.

If you layer the additional 89 percent of student loan borrowers on top of the 11 percent already handled by the Ombudsman’s office, and the number of problems that required a call to the office stays constant, the Ombudsman’s office can expect to receive about 12,000 calls per month under Congress’ new plan.

Forget for the moment that Congress hasn’t equipped the Ombudsman’s office to handle that kind of call volume. Do you really want to participate in a program that generates 12,000 problem calls per month? Unfortunately, you’re not going to have much choice. Senator Kennedy wants to railroad you into his broken plan, so you’re going to be dealing with the Ombudsman and his 12,000 phone calls per month when you have problems with your loans that need to be resolved.

Tell your Congressmen and Senators that this nonsense plan isn’t the kind of relief you had in mind. Let them know that you don’t really want to wait in line behind 12,000 other people to get your problems resolved.