I think you're right. The savings rate in Canada peaked in the early 1980s at just over 20%. Just before this crisis, we were at zero.
So something happened between the 1980s and recently in terms of the mindset about how one handled their financial affairs; access to debt and credit and their ability to take it on; people's familiarity with the options presented, including multiple credit cards; debts on houses and home equity loans; and just the facility and capability of people to take on debt, pressured by lifestyle.
They're finding right now, for example, that young people, when they leave home, no longer feel they have to wait 15 years to live the lifestyle of their parents. They live it now, and they access debt and credit to try to do so. The pressures on borrowing have just escalated and escalated over these last few decades, to the point where people have access to it and nobody sets limits on them, or at least reasonable limits. They can get themselves in trouble, and then the whole question is, how do you dig out of it? Usually you dig yourself deeper trying to get out.