I don’t know if we have any SDN regulars that have gone to Canada after graduation. We’ve had a few go there for vet school and a few Canadians that have come to the US after graduation, but I don’t know that we’ve had regulars who are US citizens go to Canada.
But yes, you have to have a state (or province I suppose) ‘sponsor’ you to take the NAVLE. This may not be the right terminology but your admin is right…you do have to specify a state/province when you sign up. If you don’t know where you’re going to end up, you can just pick a state/province (ideally one with low licensing fees), take the NAVLE through that state, and then you can transfer your score to another state/province later on when you know where you need to be licensed in or where you’re moving to. It does cost money to send your score to a different state every time you do it, but it’s a pretty simple online process. It’s simpler to have a plan in place ahead of time but isn’t a big deal to change licensing later.
I could be wrong, but I believe if an American is living in Canada or abroad, you can go on income based repayment and use the foreign earned income tax exclusion to effectively remove up to 110k of your income from being taxable/recognized by the US, which effectively makes your IBR payment zero. If your income was above 110k you may owe some money but salaries are lower in Canada so this may not be a big concern. Interest will still accrue on IBR and you’d need to be saving for the taxes when forgiveness occurs in 20-25 years. I don’t know how RAP and the BBB changes might change this though; I haven’t looked into that. If RAP still lets you do the foreign income exclusion and works how it does in the states, interest may be forgiven because your income to the US is zero, but when forgiveness happens the amount forgiven is considered income so you’ll owe taxes on the amount forgiven. If your loans are private, you’d have to pay them as normal and wouldn’t have the option of income based repayment and foreign income exclusion.
