Finance Committee on April 13th, 2026

[Sandra Cobena, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

I think this is an important point because, of course, we're looking at the headline of, say, 177% or $1.77 of debt per income, but that's an aggregate number. Once you remove the top income earners, it becomes worse.

What is the figure for the most vulnerable?

[Matthew Hoffarth]

We don't necessarily define the most vulnerable. We see it among the low-income quintile or the low-wealth quintile.

There are groups in which you might expect some more financial vulnerability. For the lowest, at the end of 2025, we saw a ratio of 433%.

[Sandra Cobena, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

What makes up the 433%?

[Matthew Hoffarth]

This is looking at all of their debt, whether it's mortgage or non-mortgage. You could expect some quintiles to have different mixes of debt. There might be less mortgage with the lowest income quintile relative to non-mortgage. Then it's really just a function of their disposable income.

[Sandra Cobena, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Can you break down the 433% of the lowest quintile? What makes up the debt?

[Matthew Hoffarth]

This is the challenge. We can do some breakdowns, but if you're asking.... The problem with our lowest-income quintile is that sometimes there are high-wealth individuals in the quintile. You could be a retiree and you're drawing down wealth. You don't have a lot of income, but you have this wealth you're drawing on.

Our challenge is that when we want to get down to some of this granularity to help policy decisions and help users understand the data, we don't necessarily have those cross tabulations.

[Sandra Cobena, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

This morning, MNP released its consumer debt index, which reported that, among Canadians, 74% say that rising food and gas prices “are straining their finances” and 43% are within $200 of being unable to meet their financial obligations.

With this in mind, would you agree that the largest expenses Canadians are struggling with are everyday necessities, such as food, gas and housing?

[Jennifer Withington]

I would say this is particularly true in the low-income quintile, in which household, shelter and transportation costs represent 103.6% of their income. That's more than they're earning at this point.

As Matthew alluded to, some of them could be retirees, and it's quite legitimate that they're drawing down their income.

As for the earlier question on what proportion is housing, with the lowest income, approximately half of their income is going to the housing portion. It is a little more than half.

[Sandra Cobena, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

I have just a few seconds.

Do you believe that reducing taxes on everyday essentials like fuel would provide meaningful relief to Canadians?

[Jennifer Withington]

I wouldn't venture into the policy. Thank you.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Jennifer Withington]

We just have the data.

[The Vice-Chair (Jasraj Hallan), Conservative, Jasraj Singh Hallan]

Thank you. That concludes this round.

Next, we have Mr. Lavoie.

[Steeve Lavoie, Liberal, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank our witnesses for being here. This is a very interesting topic.

Ms. Lang, I'm going to ask you a very easy question to start with, because I'm nice: Do you think Canadians can access credit too easily?

[Elisabeth Lang]

In my opinion, I would say it's probably true.

[Steeve Lavoie, Liberal, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Okay.

Ms. Miller, what do you think?

[Shereen Benzvy Miller]

I wouldn't venture a guess as to whether it's too easy. I expect that whatever access to credit they have is appropriate to their ability to pay for it, because that's the regulatory requirement for lenders.

[Steeve Lavoie, Liberal, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

I worked in banking for 20 years. I agree with what my colleague Mr. Leitão said earlier. When financial crises hit, the first people to be affected are those who are heavily in debt. In the current context, are these people still more affected today than households that have acquired assets, such as homes and so on?

This question is for either Ms. Lang or Ms. Miller, or Ms. Withington regarding the statistics.

[Matthew Hoffarth]

I'll pivot a bit to say that we measure all lenders to households, with the idea that you can go to chartered banks or to credit unions, as well as to other finance companies. You can go to payday lenders. You can go to all of these different entities to obtain financing.

I'm not saying whether it's easy, but there are a lot of options that we track in terms of who the lender is.

[Steeve Lavoie, Liberal, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Okay.

Ms. Withington, you briefly mentioned the figures earlier. You were talking about insolvencies. In 2009, there was a peak of 151,000 cases. Tell me about the pandemic years. During the COVID years, is it true that bankruptcies decreased significantly? This is to give a sense of the situation to the people following our work. By how much did they decrease?

[Jennifer Withington]

During the pandemic, most households had higher incomes.

The debt-to-income ratio went down significantly during the pandemic.

We see a few factors in what happened. There was less opportunity to spend money during the pandemic, so we had quite a reduction in household debt. Households were paying down their debt. They were also bringing some savings and putting them into cash and deposits. At the same time, with the measures to support households, incomes were rising as well.

[Steeve Lavoie, Liberal, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

What I understand is that, during the pandemic, people changed their consumer behaviour, and this has had a significant impact on household debt levels. Can we influence household behaviour? Savings increased significantly. People paid off their debts. This was really a positive development on a global scale.

Now that we've returned to normal conditions, we're seeing problems on an international scale, and the people who have taken on debt again are the first to be affected. Given this reality, how can we influence consumers? We won't have another pandemic; we're ruling that out as a possibility, because I know it had a major impact.

[Manon Bombardier]

Thank you for the question.

One of the things we've noticed is that knowledge alone isn't enough. You have to take that knowledge and put it into action. That's what we really emphasize in our research and our initiatives.

When we undertake small initiatives—a five-minute quiz, for example—we see a significant difference in people's behaviour. For instance, 35% of those who participated in our debt experiment will pay off their debts in full, compared to the control group. That 35% figure is quite significant. We're currently conducting these as pilot projects.

We're working with our partners to determine how we might scale up some of these experiments nationwide. Behaviour is key—not just knowledge. That's what we're focusing on.

[The Vice-Chair (Jasraj Hallan), Conservative, Jasraj Singh Hallan]

Thank you. That concludes this round.

I want to thank all the witnesses for being here.

We will now suspend for a few minutes to welcome our next witnesses.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair (Jasraj Hallan), Conservative, Jasraj Singh Hallan]

Welcome back. We'll resume the meeting now.

I would like to welcome our witnesses on this new panel.

I'd like to remind participants of the following points: Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. For those participating by video conference, click on the microphone icon to activate your mic, and please mute yourself when you are not speaking. I remind participants that all comments should be addressed through the chair.

All virtual witnesses have conducted a mandatory witness onboarding test.

You will now have five minutes for your opening remarks, after which we will open the floor to questions.

First we have, as an individual, Mr. Charles St-Arnaud for five minutes.