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“We don’t think this is a pervasive problem in Canada,” Siddall said. “It is a discrete issue.”

According to CHMC’s report for the March 31 first quarter, about 8,000 or 0.32 per cent of the almost 2.5 million loans in its portfolio of insured loans were in arrears. That rate is unchanged from last year’s third and fourth quarters.

Steven Mennill, the senior vice-president with CMHC who is responsible for the insurance portfolio, said the national trend for arrears has remained steady.

Default rates have recently declined in Ontario and British Columbia, perhaps due to an increase in underwriting standards. Rates have risen in Newfoundland and Labrador, Saskatchewan and B.C., but that trend was expected due to the impact of the oil price downturn.

“We’ve seen no unusual level of defaults associated with Home Capital,” Mennill said. “The quality of the portfolio remains quite high. There is no specific concerns really in that portfolio or any part of our business. We have a robust fraud mitigation system in place and it’s working.”

Genworth MI Canada Inc, the country’s second-largest provider of mortgage insurance, has previously said that as of March 31, mortgages originated with Home Capital made up about one per cent of its business, and that as of Dec. 31, 2016, the delinquency rate associated with those loans is less than its overall business delinquency rate of 0.21 per cent.

Siddall was in Toronto to deliver a lunch-hour speech on the federal government’s national housing strategy. The federal government is concerned that rising housing prices are exacerbating a gap between the rich and poor, Siddall said. “Our own research has found a very strong relationship here in Toronto between wealth and income inequality and house prices.”