While November and December have historically been a slow time for trustees in bankruptcy, with business picking up in the New Year, this holiday season Canadian trustees are reporting a boom in new inquiries and filings.

It’s worth noting that this financial strife is showing up even as interest rates remain near the low end of historical averages. Rather than blaming rate increases over the past 18 months, it is more accurate to blame the long period of ultra low rates, lax lending and destructive financial management that have brought Canadians to their present state of fragility–that, earned this. The payback and write-down period is going to be painful for many, as well as Canadian lenders and the consumption-driven Canadian economy overall. See Business booms for insolvency trustees amid higher Canada rates:

“The tide has turned, and the water’s starting to rise,” Ted Michalos, a licensed insolvency trustee at Hoyes, Michalos & Associates Inc., said in a phone interview. “Now it’s just a question of how quickly does it rise.”

The effects of higher borrowing costs are beginning to be felt broadly. Vehicle sales, among the sectors most sensitive to rising rates, fell the most since 2009, while growth in residential mortgages decelerated to the slowest pace since 1982, worrying signs for an economy so reliant on consumption.”