Personal Bankruptcies Soar 47.4%

The Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy issued its latest bankruptcy report covering up to the end of September, revealing that 12,305 more individuals went into bankruptcy in Canada.

The number of consumer bankruptcies also rose 29% from August 2009 to September 2009 (the near term trend).

Companies did slightly better falling 0.4%. "The wave of consumer bankruptcies has risen in direct proportion to the number of Canadians shunted onto the unemployment lines", said BMO Capital Markets economist Robert Kavcic.

"Unemployment and bankruptcies tend to be lagging indicators that rise even after the economy returns to growth, and as such, there's more pain ahead".

On the broader category of "insolvencies", which includes bankruptcies as well as proposals to settle debt, consumer filings rose 45.5% to 15,465 in September from a year earlier, and were 28.5% higher than in August.

Ontario (+45.3% and Quebec (+32.3%) continue to lead the country in consumer bankruptcies.
The two provinces also had the most business failures in September.