Higher debt and lower wage growth mean some are living on the edge despite being technically richer
Household net worth in Canada broke through the $1-million level in 2025, but people in some regions are still feeling financially vulnerable. in 2025, a 37 per cent gain from 2019, but some are still living on the edge despite being technically richer.
“Household balance sheets often look reassuring in the aggregate, and in 2025, Canada’s headline numbers delivered,” Maria Solovieva, an economist at TD Economics, said in a report on June 9. “However, important regional differences reveal nuances in the level of financial resilience.
” Household net worth in British Columbia, Ontario and Alberta came in at $1.34 million, $1.27 million and $1.02 million, respectively, but “from a vulnerability perspective, Ontario stands out as the most leveraged province in the country,” Solovieva said, given the province has the highest household-debt-to-disposable-income ratio.in B.C. and Alberta have significantly fallen from before the pandemic and have declined in all other provinces except Prince Edward Island.
“Higher ratios signal greater sensitivity to interest rates and less capacity to absorb shocks,” Solovieva said. She said Ontario households’ financial vulnerability is due to weak income growth last year that impaired people’s ability to reduce their debt even as the leverage rate of growth slowed due to higher interest rates and a slumping housing market.grew 0.8 per cent in the first quarter of 2026 from the final quarter of 2025, the second-lowest level after Quebec and well off B.C.
’s two per cent increase, according to Prior to the pandemic, B.C. had the highest household-debt-to-income ratio among the provinces, but borrowing there has slowed in recent years, thereby easing debt levels, Solovieva said.are helping to keep a lid on debt growth as they grew at the slowest pace in Saskatchewan, and while they grew in Alberta and Manitoba, it was at a rate “well below” the national average. Red-hot financial markets drove most of the gains in household wealth in 2025 as real estate — the previous driver — slumped.
Solovieva estimated that average stock market gains landed in the range of 8.8 per cent to 10.3 per cent last year and it looks like some households are tapping those windfalls to “bridge the income gap” — at least they did in 2025. That appeared to be the case in Ontario.
Despite household disposable income gains trailing those in other provinces, spending stuck around the national average as the stock market windfall for Ontarians came in close to the national average. P.E. I. and Alberta households recorded decent gains in wages, but less-than-stellar financial asset gains in 2025, which could explain why they spent less of their disposable income last year than the national average.
Saskatchewan had a banner year for wage gains, but Solovieva said household spending was “restrained” due to the large number of people in the province who are self-employed. Stronger financial market gains coupled with above-average income growth and higher overall household wealth pushed spending in B.C. to the highest level among the provinces.
But despite the generally good times last year, households’ debt and dependence by some on stock market gains to buttress spending could come home to roost in 2026.
“These differences may become increasingly important as provincial economies navigate a period of softer growth, still-elevated borrowing costs and a housing market that remains subdued across much of the country,” Solovieva said. Posthaste: Why the Bank of Canada might be closer than you think to ending its pause on interest rates Canadians took a total of 1.9 million return trips to the U.S. in May, a 9.5 per cent increase from the same month in 2025, according to Statistics Canada’s The rebound in travel to the U.S. was driven by a 15.1 per cent increase in trips by automobile, while trips by air dropped 5.5 per cent from 2025.
May’s data marked the second consecutive month of year-over-year increases in trips to the U.S. and the second increase since December 2024. Travel trends among Canadians started to shift in early 2025 as political tensions grew between Canada and the U.S., with trips across the southern border declining ever since.
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