Decades after getting a child-care bursary from Ontario, this woman was told to pay it back

Jennifer Craft says she did everything right when she received an Ontario child-care bursary in 1996 as a single mother.

The money was to help pay for daycare for her two-and-a-half-year old daughter while she studied at Fleming College in Peterborough, Ont., and that's how it was used, she says.

"It helped subsidize some of that cost so that I could go to nursing school and provide a better life for ourselves," said Craft. 

But Craft was recently contacted by a collection agency seeking that money because she allegedly failed to provide receipts to demonstrate the $1,245 was spent properly.

First came the automated calls in late 2023 and early 2024 from the agency addressing Craft by her maiden name, which she changed after getting married in 2000. 

"It's hard to prove now, 30 years later, that I did the appropriate things," she told Go Public. "I don't even keep tax documents longer than eight years. How am I going to find 30-year-old child-care bursary receipts?" 

"Even in court, you're innocent until proven guilty. I'm being proved guilty until proven innocent."

The collection agency forwarded Craft two letters in September 2024. The first, which the college had sent her in 1996, asked for her child-care receipts. The other was from Ontario's Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities, supposedly sent in 2000, requesting full repayment of the bursary, which was now considered an "overpayment" because previous attempts to contact her about providing receipts were unsuccessful.

But Craft says she submitted those receipts and even confirmed this, over the phone, with the college back in '96. She says she never received the second letter. 

"It wasn't like I lived in Timbuktu. They could have found me [in] the last 30 years," she said. 

Craft, who now lives in Yellowknife, says the money allowed her to become a nurse and to contribute to her community, particularly during the pandemic when she was a frontline worker — as director of care at three different long-term facilities in Toronto, Picton and Belleville.

Throughout her career, Craft has also worked as a nurse in B.C., N.W.T. and Nunavut. She moved to Yellowknife in late 2023.  

"I was a productive member of society. I paid my taxes. The child in question is now 32 and has two kids of her own. So it even seems a little silly that you're suing a grandma for a child-care bursary."

The collection agency, Financial Debt Recovery, says it cannot speak to individual repayment cases.