Nearly half of Canadians are within $200 a month of being unable to pay their bills, poll finds

CALGARY – A brand new poll suggests nearly half of Canadians surveyed recently are within $200 monthly to be not able to purchase their bills making their debt payments.

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The Ipsos Reid survey also found about one-quarter of the 1,582 people who responded to the poll were already unable to cover their bills and debt payments.

The online poll was done between Jan. 27 and Jan. 29 for MNP Debt, which provides licensed trustee services in six provinces, from Quebec to British Columbia.

MNP says the poll discovered that 31 per cent of respondents said any increase in interest rates could move them towards bankruptcy.

Ipsos Reid conducted the poll about a week after the Parliamentary Budget Office issued a study on Jan. 19 that said Canada has seen the biggest rise in household debt in accordance with salary of any G7 country since 2000.

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The survey also followed Bank of Canada’s decision to keep a vital lending rate at a historically low-level of 0.5 percent on Jan. 20, as the central bank lowered economic growth estimates for 2015 and 2016.

The polling industry’s professional body, the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association, says online surveys can’t be assigned a margin of error because they are not a random sample and therefore are certainly not representative of the entire population.