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It wasn’t always that way. Canada used to be known as a nation of savers: In 1982, we stockpiled 20 per cent of our annual income. But by 2014 that rate was down to 3.6 per cent – and at the end of last year our combined debt was $1.82-trillion, greater than the total value of what we produced in goods and services.

Today, households with at least $100,000 or more in total income account for 37 per cent of all debt in Canada. Households with income of at least $50,000 but less than $100,000 represent 38 per cent.

Even Americans, who we like to think are more spendthrift than us, are managing to save more than Canadians. In fact, we are second only to Greece in the growth rate of household debt.

Not surprisingly this has spurred major international watchdogs like McKinsey, Fitch and Moody’s to call our consumer debt level “unsustainable,” and in “urgent” need of monitoring. But is our new relationship to debt really a crisis – or a new, necessary, normal?

More than ever before, Canadians are socialized into debt at an early age and are living with it longer, sometimes through an entire life cycle. By the time most young people graduate from high school, they’re already taking on student debt to get through college or university, have credit cards, and are responsible for car loans or leases.

And once they move on to mortgages they have so much debt they may carry it through to retirement: Statscan found that the number of families 65 and over carrying debt had jumped from 27 per cent in 1999 to a whopping 43 per cent in 2012.