Queer Concordia officially launches gender-affirming care loan program

Students will be able to access interest-free loans of up to $2,000 to cover procedure costs

NewsBriefGeneviève Sylvestre — Published March 9, 2025 3 minutes

The program has a $20,000 pool and will allow students to access interest-free loans of up to $2,000 to pay for GAC procedures up front.

Queer Concordia senior coordinator Jessica Winton said that, in part due to Queer Concordia receiving the smallest fee levy of any group ($0.02 per undergraduate student, per credit), it’s been challenging to set-up the program with no outside funding. 

“Just the lawyer costs alone are anticipated to be upwards of $3,000, so that's already a significant amount of money,” Winton said. 

Winton has been trying to implement a loan program at Concordia University since the start of the Fall 2024 semester. She said she feels privileged her parents were able to help her pay for the upfront cost of the GAC procedure that saved her life and wants to help others access care. 

“I know a lot of people who go through putting themselves in lifelong debt simply to go through surgery without insurance, and the fact that we have insurance but so few people are actually able to use it is incredibly disappointing,” Winton said. 

The CSU Health and Dental Plan offers a lifetime maximum coverage of $10,000 with $5,000 maximum per procedure for GAC. This can create a large financial burden for students, especially since procedure costs often exceed $10,000. 

Additionally, according to the CSU website, there is currently no pay-direct coverage available for GAC, meaning students must pay out-of-pocket for their procedure and wait to be refunded. 

Only students registered for the GreenShield GAC insurance through the CSU Health and Dental Plan are eligible for the loan program. Additionally, students must provide Queer Concordia with several documents including government identification, a student ID and a pre-authorization form from GreenShield or their claims history. 

“That way, we can just make sure that you're eligible, that you're not going to use this money for something that's outside of the scope of the fund, as well as just identification to make sure that we have the right person that we're issuing the loan to so there [aren’t] any legal problems,” Winton said. 

Winton added that the copies of the student’s identification will be shredded after the loan is reimbursed. 

The loans will remain interest-free for two months. However, students suffering with involuntary delays can make their case to the Queer Concordia board of directors to pause interest. 

“Typically, most claims get processed within about three weeks at most, in my experience,” Winton said. “The two-month period is to allow for kind of a grace period where, if GreenShield misprocesses something [..] for, let's say, a month, there's still time.”

According to the Queer Concordia website, international students are eligible to access the loan program so long as they have opted into the CSU Health and Dental Plan. The website also encourages students to write to the CSU if they are not satisfied with the current coverage provided by the union. 

Students interested in the program can stop by the Queer Concordia office during Winton’s office hours from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. every Wednesday.