Nearly half of Canadians don’t see their mortgage as being debt, according to a survey from Manulife.

The survey of more than 2,300 Canadians found 45 per cent would consider themselves debt-free if the only outstanding debt they had was a mortgage.

But this seems to be a generational difference -- the younger you are, the likelier it is you don’t see a mortgage as debt.

Fully 68 per cent of respondents in their twenties didn’t consider mortgages to be debt, while only 29 per cent of those in their fifties agreed.

Jason Daly, Manulife’s VP for marketing and business development, suggests this may be in part because young people are more likely to carry high-interest credit card debt, and are focused on paying that down.

But it also “could be a result of our current low interest rate environment, which makes debt management seem less intimidating than it was in the ‘80s and 90’s, when rates were much higher,” Daly said in a statement.

Story continues below