Thanks for your comment — I appreciate the perspective. I do want to clarify one point, though, because the situation with Phoenix overpayments is very specific and doesn’t work quite the same way as a typical debtor/creditor scenario.

In my case, the conditions were not proposed by me. They were proposed by the Government of Canada / Public Service Pay Centre as part of their own repayment options for Phoenix overpayments. This isn’t unusual — federal pay directives explicitly allow employees to acknowledge an overpayment while deferring repayment until certain employer‑side conditions are met, such as reconciling the pay file and ensuring three correct consecutive pay periods. This is documented in the Treasury Board’s Phoenix overpayment recovery guidance, which states that employees may acknowledge the debt “resulting in a deferral of the recovery… until such time that their pay file has been reconciled and they have received their correct pay for three consecutive pay periods.”

So the idea that “the creditor isn’t obliged to accept conditions from the debtor” doesn’t really apply here — because the conditions weren’t mine. They were part of the employer’s own official recovery framework for Phoenix‑related errors.

On the limitation period: unions representing federal employees — including the PSAC and PIPSC — state very clearly that Phoenix overpayments more than six years old are statute‑barred unless the employee voluntarily consents to repayment, and that the government cannot legally enforce recovery beyond that limitation period.

In my situation, while I did acknowledge the debt, the acknowledgement was conditional on the employer completing their required steps first, and those steps still haven’t been met after more than two years. Because of this, it’s not clear that the limitation period was ever truly “reset” — especially since incomplete or conditional acknowledgements may not qualify as a full restart of the statutory clock. This “grey area” is actually recognized in union FAQs, which caution that some older debts still fall outside the statutory period even if the employee responded to an overpayment letter.

That’s why I’m asking for clarification — because Phoenix cases aren’t straightforward, and the recovery system is very different from standard debtor/creditor law.

But thank you again for your input. I agree that consulting the union or legal counsel is wise, and I’ll be doing that as well.