Credit Delinquency Rate In Canada Climbs Up To 19 Percent In May

Toronto, Ontario (AHN) - A report released by Equifax Canada Thursday warned about the rising debt delinquency rate in Canada that has climbed up to 19 percent by end of May.

Most of the financial woes were made by about 500,000 cardholders who purchased furniture and electronics items. For an account to be considered as delinquent it must have missed payments for at least 90 days.

The report's released coincided with the report by a Senate committee of a report which pushed Ottawa to be more aggressive in protecting Canadians consumers and small businesses from spiraling credit and debit card interest rates and fees. In particular the Senate committee report recommended the creation of an oversight agency to supervise credit card firms.

Pierrette Ringuette, the Liberal senator who initiated the study, told the Toronto Star, "The small and medium businesses of this country are not asking for a bailout.... They're only asking for fairness - just like consumers are only asking for fairness. I think it's high time that government paid attention to them."

In March Equifax pushed for higher awareness to prevent the rise in ID fraud, which includes credit cards, following reports that identity theft in Canada went up by over 20 percent in 2008 compared to the previous year.

Equifax Canada president Carol Gray said in a statement then, "Fraudsters are clearly becoming more inventive and lenders need to deploy more sophisticated data-sharing solutions that they have traditionally used. Today's solutions need to deliver flexible cross-matching techniques that can be fine-tuned by users to try to stay ahead of the curve."