Canadian Mortgage Debt Has Already Passed Its Cycle Peak

Canadian households are still borrowing at an elevated pace, but it’s not for housing this time. Statistics Canada (StatCan) data shows household credit climbed in May, growing at its fastest pace in well over a year. Despite mortgages representing the majority of debt, the segment continued to slow after a premature cycle peak. Consumer credit is doing the bulk of the heavy lifting, with households more than tripling the dollar volume they did last year. 

Households continue to accumulate debt, and it’s rising at a fairly brisk pace. Outstanding household credit climbed 0.5% (+$16.9 billion) to $3.27 trillion in May, up 4.4% (+$138.7 billion) from last year. The dollar value is a new record, but that’s hardly surprising, as credit rarely pulls back in modern Canada. 

What is worth noticing is that annual growth since the start of 2025 is consistently higher than pre-pandemic. Typically, a low-rate shock like the one in 2020 would pull forward credit demand and lead to a slowdown. But that’s not the only oddity—interest rates are higher today, home sales are weaker, and population growth is slower. Yet the rate is moving at a fairly robust clip. 

Drilling down into the data, this shifts from a mystery to a concerning issue. 

Most household debt is mortgage debt. Canadians owed a whopping $2.4 trillion in mortgage debt, rising 0.5% (+$11.9 billion) in May, up 4.3% (+$100.9 billion) from last year. Once again, a record—but the growth rate is the story these days. Annual growth of 4.3% in May sounds lofty, but it’s the weakest level since late 2024. In the roughly two decades prior to 2020, only a handful of months have reported weaker annual growth. Most concerning, though, is that the above chart clearly shows the current cycle is grinding lower already. That’s expected following the growth that peaked in 2022, as lower rates pulled forward consumption that would have been done later (often at a lower price). 

But that doesn’t answer why credit growth remains elevated in this context. That leaves one suspect—consumer credit. 

Households racked up an unusually large consumer credit tab. They added 0.6% (+$5.0 billion) to hit $827.7 billion in May, tripling (+200.4%) last year’s dollar volume and marking the biggest May since 2023. That helped annual growth accelerate to 4.8% (+$37.8 billion), a 17-month high and the highest rate reported for May since 2010.  

Rising consumer credit can be a sign of economic health, as consumer borrowing is generally productive. That is, it’s for consumption that boosts output, not financialized assets. Historically, Canada’s strongest economies have seen robust growth here. That’s an optimistic take for those who need it.  

Those a little more skeptical are likely to note that consumer credit occasionally rises with stress, too. During the peak of the business cycle, once things start to cool, the combination of rising expenses and slowing opportunities can result in households borrowing more to make ends meet. Considering that consumer credit is growing while delinquencies are rising, it’s probably best not to dismiss this possibility.