I'll take a stab at this.
I think it's important to drill down into the mortgage debt and credit card debt parts of household debt. Let's call it collateralized debt versus credit card debt. In terms of collateralized debt, it's really quite interesting that 40% of Canadian homeowners don't even have a mortgage. The Bank of Canada estimates that roughly 12% of Canadian homeowners have mortgages that are at what the bank considers excessive levels. The fact is that 58% of Canadian households have virtually no debt at all, in other words, debt of less than $25,000.
A lot of the time the policy-makers seem to be most concerned about housing debt as opposed to credit card debt, which is certainly not my point of view. It's not just because I work for a mortgage lender, but because, from a personal perspective, I've never paid just the minimum on a credit card, and I've taught my son not to do that either because interest rates are so high.