Again, what we're seeing is a reduction in savings. What isn't happening and what I didn't hear in the explanation—which I think would match with what all MPs are hearing from their constituents—is an increase in consumers' ability to repay. Per capita GDP has been flat for a decade. The only thing that would allow Canadians to take on more debt or absorb higher debt service costs that won't result in a loss of quality of life—an inability to spend money on other things or to save and to get ahead for retirement, or for other purposes, or to simply keep spinning their debt—would be a rise in their actual income and ability to pay debt. Canadians can only exhaust savings, refinance or cut spending for so long. Any household, if those are the three things that are keeping it going, is going to run out of room at some point.
Therefore, what does the consumer indebtedness say about the need for a more productive economy that can support the debt loads we've seen?