There is a wide disconnect between the data about Canada’s economic strength and how Canadians actually feel about the economy, says a new consumer report.

The report from Toronto ad agency Bensimon Byrne found that, while Canada has recorded GDP growth every year since the end of the last recession, only 57 per cent of Canadians believe it’s growing. That’s 18 percentage points lower than before the last recession.

The study suggests that Canadians’ personal financial situations — strained from years of accumulating larger and larger debt loads — are causing them to perceive the economy as weaker than it is.

Canadian average household debt is sitting at an all-time high above 163 per cent of average household income, driven there by low interest rates that have made mortgages more affordable, but sent house prices soaring.

If interest rates were to rise just one percentage point, more than a quarter of Canadians (27 per cent) would have a “big problem” making their debt payments, the study found. Fully sixty per cent would at least have “some” problem making payments.

“Canadians have been primarily borrowing to maintain lifestyle in the face of stagnant incomes,” the report says.

Even stripping away mortgages, half of Canadians have more debt than savings, the study found.

And while the Bank of Canada may be fretting about the country’s low inflation rate (a worrying sign of slack in the economy), consumers themselves aren’t seeing things this way.

The cost of living has surpassed health care as the number-one concern for consumers, the study found.

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