Comment: An interesting quote from the piece: "What’s interesting here, noted a Royal Bank economist, is how the pace of mortgage borrowing is easing but Canadians are jumping into other forms of credit."

Multiple models could be proposed for why that is happening. Here is one far-out, zany, ridiculous model that could lead to that situation:

Step 1. The Vancouver and Toronto regions grow to include close to 30 percent of Canada's homes.
Step 2. The prices of those homes skyrocket to well over one million dollars from overseas money.
Step 3. Local workers there give up trying to get mortgages for dozens of times their annual salary.
Step 4. A massive drop in mortgage debt occurs because overseas money buys houses all cash down.
Step 5. Local workers, now relegated to renting, compete for expensive and rare available units.
Step 6. The high rents and very long commutes and lousy wages necessitate borrowing from banks.

Or wait a minute, is that model really far-out, zany and ridiculous?