It is rare in official Ottawa for candid admissions about the dire state of Canadian household indebtedness to be made public. Successive neoliberal Conservative and Liberal governments have tended to regard the financialization of the Canadian economy and the accompanying growth in household indebtedness as either an insignificant or a benign development. I have tried to show in several previous posts just how destructive a trend this actually is in economic terms. Yesterday, the President of the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation provided one of the first really honest insights into the exposure of Canadian families and households to high levels of mortgage and consumer debt and its potential implications. He was speaking in defense of the retention of the mortgage interest rate stress test in response to several Canadian real estate and banking concerns which have lobbied to either diminish the stringency of the test or to remove it altogether. His unvarnished comments in a letter to the House Finance Committee make for compelling reading. See: https://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/en/media-newsroom/cmhc-statement-letter-standing-committee-finance-fina
