519-646-2222Don’t believe what you are being told!
Seriously, don’t believe what you are being told without first doing your own research. Recent reports suggest that mortgages in arrears are worse in the USA and the UK than in Canada – but mortgages in arrears in the USA and the UK are deemed to be in arrears after one missed payment, while Canada’s definition is “AT LEAST 90 days in arrears of a payment”
Try to find an accurate value for Canadian consumer debt – it is all over the map, Trans-Union has its data Equifax has its, the Bank of Canada has another value and so on. So let’s get right back to raw data. The google search terms that yielded the results in the meme above were “what is the population of Canada?” and “how many Canadians have mortgages?” as well as “What is the average value of a mortgage in Canada?”.
Lets do the math:
Apparently, 35.5% of Canadians have mortgages. There are reportedly 41,288,599 people in Canada and the average mortgage value is $338,522. Let me know if you have any problem with the math: 35.5% of 41,288,599 = 14,657,453 so apparently some 14,657,453 people have mortgages.
The average mortgage value is $338,522 so times that amount by the 14,657,453 people with mortgages and we get a total value of $4,961,870,304,466 in Canadian mortgage debt. Oh, but wait some people are coupled, so let’s figure out how many share mortgages”In 2021, 43.1% of Canadians aged 15 and older were not in a married or common-law union. This includes people who are single, divorced, separated, or widowed.“
Hmmm okay so 56.9% of the mortgages are shared the rest are single folks, fair? So single people have mortgages totalling $2,138,566,101,224 and couples own the balance half of which is $1,411,652,101,621. I hope this makes sense so far!
When we add these two numbers together, to adjust for the actual amount of mortgages, it appears that Canadians owe some $3,550,218,202,844 in total mortgage debt. This is in addition to an estimated $850,000,000,000 (per year) in credit card debt, based on data from the Canadian Bankers Association (published in 2019) as well as a plethora of other debt.
According to Google’s AI (Anti-Intellectualism) 85% of mortgages that were contracted when the Bank of Canada’s interest rate was below 1% will become due for renegotiation next year. Will you be able to keep your home, and does it even make any sense at all to try, in 2025?
In considering how much debt there is in the system it is also worth being mindful that there is a lot of unreported debt as well as underreported debt. Private mortgages have increased exponentially during the past decade, mortgage brokers and agents have also being commonly making off the books loans to naive borrowers to close deals and enhance their commissions for selling mortgages at high risk of default.
The Canadian Bankers Association formerly published statistics on Credit Cards in circulation, detailing the average charge on those cards, the total value of charges on the cards, the amount of cash advances, etc. The last year reported was 2018, and they have since deleted the data off their website – still available on the waybackmachine – and stopped publicizing this data. Following the usage trends and growth of the use of bank issued Credit Cards since reporting began in 1977 – it is clear that Canadians are charging very close to $1 trillion on those cards each year.
Recent media reports, enforced by speeches from politicians of all stripes, have been suggesting that car thefts are going through the roof in Canada – the problem with the data relates to the baseline year of 2020 – when even car thieves were locked down. A Google search using the search term “car thefts in Canada over the past ten years” will bring you to a statistical report that shows a very different picture – but the foundation for increased vehicle insurance premiums has been laid.
Okay, now let’s get real!
Just for fun, let’s enjoy a clip from the movie JFK that explains very succinctly how we are all duped by statistics. Check this link and imagine you are the elephant. At least that is what the establishment, politicians and bureaucrats would have you believe. Don’t believe what you are being told without doing your own research.