Our motivation really was that the issue of household indebtedness had been flagged by both the Government of Canada as well as the Bank of Canada. We wanted to contribute to the analysis in highlighting one of Statistics Canada's recent data indicators on this, and that is the household debt service ratio, which we believe provides probably a better indicator of the vulnerability that households face by carrying such a high debt load.
Our analysis suggested that in the current environment, with low interest rates, while this ratio was high, it was not outside of historical experience. But looking ahead, if we believe that interest rates are going to increase even gradually, maybe 200 to 300 basis points, this would stretch households further in terms of their debt servicing capacity.
One of the limitations of the analysis was that it was done at a very aggregate level. As I'm sure you're aware, in the work at the Bank of Canada, they're able to look and focus more on the distribution side of this, so the aggregate numbers mask a large variation across a wide range of households.