AI Analysis: Selected credit aggregates, monthly

Executive Summary

Statistics Canada's 'Selected Credit Aggregates, Monthly' dataset (Table 36100666) tracks 7 credit categories across 434 monthly periods from January 1990 to February 2026, revealing sustained long-term growth in Canadian credit markets with values ranging from $1,237M to $5,589,842M CAD. All credit categories are strongly positively correlated (r ≥ 0.870), indicating they trend upward together, with household credit emerging as the largest and most dominant segment. The data is highly right-skewed — the mean of $962,002M is nearly double the median of $490,340M — reflecting the outsized scale of the largest credit aggregates relative to smaller categories.

Key Findings

• The dataset spans 36+ years of monthly data (January 1990 to February 2026), comprising 3,038 records across 7 distinct credit aggregate categories, all measured in millions of Canadian dollars.
• Credit values range enormously — from a minimum of $1,237M to a maximum of $5,589,842M CAD — a total spread of over $5.5 trillion, with a standard deviation of $1,131,642M that exceeds the mean, confirming extreme variability across categories.
• The distribution is strongly right-skewed, with a mean of $962,002M nearly double the median of $490,340M, and the middle 50% of values falling between $113,971M and $1,536,368M.
• All credit categories are highly positively correlated, with household credit variables correlating almost perfectly with each other (r = 1.000) and even the weakest cross-category correlations remaining very high (r ≈ 0.870–0.874).
• Household credit is the largest and most dominant segment, with chartered banks accounting for the vast majority of household lending as evidenced by a near-perfect correlation (r = 0.997) between all-sectors and chartered bank household credit.
• No long-term point outliers were detected using the 3×IQR method, indicating generally smooth credit trends; however, the most notable anomaly was a sharp 45% single-month spike in January 1997 in 'Chartered bank credit with governments, debt securities.'
• The dataset was last updated on April 17, 2026, ensuring near-current relevance, and continues to be refreshed monthly by Statistics Canada.