The high level of household indebtedness poses an economic risk in that if you had any sort of economic shock that would result in either higher unemployment or higher interest rates in particular, it would create a vulnerability on the household sector.
My understanding and my analysis of the real estate market in Canada suggests that even if you were to have an economic shock, the big risk isn't that Canadians would lose their homes as they did in the United States. I think the greater economic risk is that if you have rising interest rates, a greater share of personal disposable income will go toward servicing the debt and that's money that isn't going into expenditure. Consumer spending is 60% of the economy. The risk from the high level of household debt is that down the road, when we ultimately see a rebalancing of interest rates, it could take a very significant toll on the economy in the sense that even small changes in interest rates will have a bigger impact on household finances than they have had in the past.
This is why I think it's appropriate that the Bank of Canada has been flagging this risk.