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More than three years after Angela Greter completed her PhD in animal science at the University of Guelph, she hadn’t repaid any of the $64,000 loaned to her from Student Aid Alberta.

Instead, she repeatedly invoked what an Alberta court adjudicator recently said amounted to legal mumbo jumbo to avoid repayment — “pseudolegal” tactics ripped from the playbooks of con men and designed to “frustrate the administration of justice.”

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These half-baked arguments are appearing with “troubling frequency” in Canadian courtrooms, noted the adjudicator, ordering Greter to repay the loan.

But in phone and email exchanges this week, Greter, who lives in High River, Alta., with her husband, said the court had “grossly misrepresented” what she was seeking.

Her intent, she said, was never to avoid or stall paying back the money. All she was trying to do was get assurance from the province it was still the debt holder and that it hadn’t securitized the debt and sold it to another party.