27 March 2018

As a result, the 12 month growth was 5.53%. It means that consumers are increasing their debts faster than they can pay them off.

Meanwhile, consumer debt (including car loans and credit cards) is also going up, although it showed a small monthly drop in February. The balance of outstanding consumer credit was down by 0.01% from January and reached $601 billion. The 12 month total gain was 5.42%, which is quite close to the mortgage pace.

Although consumer debt decrease sounds good, it can also be viewed from a negative point of view. For instance, if you’re representing a large international company, warning about excessive debt level in Canada, the news about monthly drops is great. At the same time, if you’re a politician trying to pad GDP results with debt driven growth, you won’t like it. Switching from debt driven consumption to income based one could be a true miracle. So these numbers have two sides to consider.