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As has been pointed out often, Americans took on a similar burden ahead of the financial crisis. And now household debt is the economy’s Achilles’ heel. Joblessness is at a level that economists associate with full employment, and exports touched records earlier this year. But all that debt makes Canada vulnerable to a shock; say an economic crisis in China that crushes global demand and sinks commodity prices.

In such a scenario, all those exporters who were loving life this summer would be in trouble. The unemployment rate would rise, investment would plunge, and a wave of defaults likely would follow. It could be bad, which is why the Bank of Canada is raising interest rates so slowly.

High levels of employment and surveys that show companies are struggling to keep up with orders imply upward pressure on the inflation rate, which the central bank is mandated to contain. But policy makers don’t want to be the cause of one of those negative shocks by raising interest rates faster than indebted households can bear. (The Canadian debt binge continued after Harper left office: the ratio peaked at 170 per cent in 2017 and is now around 169 per cent.)

“Debt to income is still really high,” Carolyn Wilkins, the Bank of Canada’s senior deputy governor, told reporters in Ottawa on Wednesday.

Wilkins isn’t exactly media shy, but she tends not to speak in public for the sake of it. Her decision to give a little time to journalists was meant to emphasize that the central bank is doing a lot of work on debt and the threat it presents.