B4 G THE GLOBE AND MAIL | MONDAY, MARCH 9, 2026 | REPORT ON BUSINESS OPINION & ANALYSIS ‘W ho do I shoot,” a farmer famously asked in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. Bad luck and bad credit cost the man his family farm. He sought someone to blame. Steinbeck’s Great Depres- sion antagonists were “the bank,” an indifferent monster that gorged on profits, and an unre- lenting capitalist system that ground people down. The Great Depression had a profound effect on the generation that lived it. Steinbeck portrayed this in his fiction. The journalist Caroline Bird documented the reality in The Invisible Scar (1966). That generation learned, argued Ms. Bird, that the things they own- ed – their houses, their cars, their furniture – were not really theirs. They belonged to the bank, and the bank could take them back at any time. The trauma fed insecurities, Ms. Bird found. People lived as if a new disaster was just around the corner. The lessons faded as the generation that endured the Depression disappeared into the past. Yet it is a lesson too many Canadians today are learning anew. Headlines in these pages point to the trend, Canadians are strug- gling to pay off credit cards, mort- gages and are layering loans as debt loads soar. The bleeding has begun, and the financial fallout is scarring new generations. Household debt in Canada as a percentage of GDP is 103 per cent, winning Canada silver among 34 OECD countries. Switzerland takes the gold at 128 per cent. Another way to frame household debt is as a percentage of after-tax (net), disposable income. House- hold debt in Canada is running at about 180 per cent of after-tax income. Percentages are economist talk, though. Canadians, like Steinbeck’s farmer, better appre- ciate balances owed and accumu- lating interest. Here is what that looks like according to the most recent TransUnion credit indus- try report: In total dollars, house- hold debt “reached $2.6-trillion” by the end of 2025. In a one-year period, the average consumer bal- ance for most types of loans have all increased by about 4 per cent. Rather than paying down debt last year, Canadians have dug down deeper. Earlier this month MNP Ltd., a large insolvency practice in Cana- da, published Ipsos market research undertaken at its behest. It explores the attitude of Cana- dians toward their personal debt, budgeting and aspects of debt lit- eracy. It tells us that almost half of all those surveyed “regret the amount of debt they have taken on over their lifetimes.” A little less told Ipsos “they are concerned about their current level of debt.” Shockingly, for a country that has “the most edu- cated work force in the G7,” says Statistics Canada, Ipsos found that 20 per cent of Canadians “say they do not have a solid under- standing of how interest rate increases impact their financial situation.” Those most riddled with anxie- ty about debt are those that are the most distant from the gener- ation that saw the Great Depres- sion up close. More than half of Gen Z and millennials are con- cerned about their current debts. Almost 60 per cent of millennials regret the debt they have bur- dened themselves with, “the highest of any age group,” Ipsos says. At the close of 2025, consumer bankruptcies were up compared to December, 2024. The number of consumer insolvencies exceeded 140,000 in 2025. According to the Canadian Association of Insol- vency and Restructuring Profes- sionals, that is the “highest vol- ume of consumer insolvencies in 16 years (since 2009).” This laissez-faire attitude to accumulating debt is more than a consumer problem, it is a broader financial pathology infecting large swaths of corporate Canada as well as provincial and federal governments. “Canada’s non-financial corpo- rations,” as The Hub has high- lighted, carry debt equal to 163 per cent of GDP, placing us in the top tier globally.” Canadian govern- ment debt (federal and provincial combined) amounts to 111 per cent of GDP, surpassing the OECD average of 72 per cent. Govern- ment spending in Canada, as Gary Mason noted in these pages recently, signals “the death of fis- cal sanity” in this country. Canadians as a people have for- gotten what their Great Depres- sion forebears realized the hard way. Debt is not in itself a ticket to a higher living standard. It can be a trap. The more of it, the more it threatens the financial well-being of households, that of businesses and government as well when economic shocks occur – such as rising unemployment, higher interest rates, new tariffs or wars. Ms. Bird poignantly showed that the most damaging blow of the Depression was not the loss of money, but the loss of the future. When “the bank” comes, who will Canadians shoot? Canadians are happily borrowing even deeper Household debt in Canada as a percentage of GDP is 103 per cent, second-highest among 34 OECD countries JOHN TURLEY-EWART OPINION Growing debt Average consumer balance, by product* Mortgages $373,118 $389,777 4.46% Auto loans $29,656 $30,924 4.27% Installment loans $22,669 $23,576 4.00% Lines of credit $35,190 $36,468 3.63% Credit cards $4,681 $4,763 1.74% CATEGORY Q4 2024 Q4 2025 % CHG. *Represents the average balance held by a consumer across each type of product (consumers can have multiple instances of same product). THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: TRANSUNION.CA Contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail, a regulatory compliance consultant and a Canadian banking historian T he adoption of a new feder- al electricity strategy is crit- ical for our future growth, and here’s why: Canada’s next competitive advantage won’t be the amount of fossil fuels we can export; it will be the industry, investment and jobs we can attract by solidifying our clean electricity infrastructure. The world is undergoing a clear structural shift from fossil fuels to clean electricity, driven by electri- fication of industry and trans- port, the explosive growth of data-intensive technologies, and investor preference – with more than twice as much investment going to clean energy than fossil fuel developments in the past year. The industries of the future demand abundant, low-carbon and reliable power. Canada has what it takes to attract that investment. But to do so, we need a new strategy that prioritizes clean electricity and transmission build-out across Canada, co-ordinated by a feder- al-provincial-territorial clean electricity table to tackle signifi- cant constraints on growth. Canada is entering the clean- energy transition with strong advantages. Our electricity sector is already roughly 85-per-cent non-emitting and our resource abundance is nearly unmatched with large uranium reserves and substantial deposits of lithium, nickel, cobalt and rare earth elements. We enjoy a reputation for economic and financial stabil- ity, and we hold preferential access to markets representing 66 per cent of global GDP. These benefits are driving investment. Since 2021, Canada has attracted an estimated $60- billion to $70-billion in an- nounced capital investment across key clean economy sec- tors, which should create at least 26,000 long-term direct jobs and tens of thousands more across supply chains. But the edge Canada currently enjoys is under threat. Grid constraints, interprovin- cial barriers, slow infrastructure build-out and intensifying global competition are eroding Cana- da’s clean electricity advantage and putting future investment at risk. More than 12,000 companies – representing 40 per cent of global market capitalization – have now set emissions reduction targets, and more than three-quarters of those have set Scope 2 targets that specifically increase demand for clean electricity. Hyperscale data-centre oper- ators and cloud providers have clean energy commitments across their global portfolios. Canada’s aluminum and low- carbon steel producers already secure price and volume advan- tages in markets where buyers are under pressure to decarbonize. Automakers, rail operators and construction companies are locking in low-carbon material supply commitments. EU battery regulations and tightened cli- mate targets at the original equip- ment manufacturer (OEM) level are leading automakers to embed renewable-energy and emissions thresholds in contracts for alumi- num, steel and battery materials. In the mining sector, grid-con- nected, low-carbon power is now among the top five investment criteria, alongside ore quality and jurisdictional risk. Global demand for reliable, clean power is expected to rise two to three times by 2050. Yet Canadian provinces are already scrambling to manage a massive influx of requests from energy- intensive sectors. Ontario is forecasting 75-per- cent demand growth by 2050. Since 2022, Quebec has received more than 250 industrial connec- tion requests totalling roughly 43 GW – more than the utility’s entire installed capacity. And similar constraints are being felt in Manitoba, British Columbia, Alberta and Atlantic Canada. Many of the projects on Cana- da’s nation-building projects list will need new generation and transmission that has not yet been secured or even planned. Senior executives across finance, technology, heavy indus- try, mining and energy develop- ment tell us that predictable, cost-competitive clean electricity adds material asset value or enables market access. Industry leaders emphasize that clean electricity is no longer a marginal siting factor – in many cases it is central to capital allocation deci- sions. This is a real-life example of “if you build it, they will come.” But grid constraints, permit- ting delays and interconnection uncertainty are already putting up to $220-billion in potential capital investment in large-scale Canadian projects at risk, along- side more than 80,000 direct jobs, in sectors like EVs and batteries, green steel, data centres and crit- ical minerals – the very sectors Canada wants to grow for our future prosperity. And loss of indirect employ- ment is an even bigger risk. Crit- ical mining projects, for example, create an average of 2.3 indirect jobs for every direct job. In his Davos speech, Prime Minister Mark Carney spoke about the transformation of the global economy and some of the opportunities for our country. Taking advantage of those oppor- tunities is not just about building trade relationships. It’s about building the infrastructure that can support that trade expansion and capital formation. That starts with convening political, industry and investor leadership to support a new elec- tricity strategy that accelerates clean generation, storage and transmission build-out across the country, and prioritizes grid pro- jects and interprovincial ties at a pace consistent with industrial and electrification needs. Canada must remember the future is electricity, not fossil fuels KEVIN THOMAS OPINION Chief executive officer of the Shareholder Association for Research & Education, which recently released the report Power at Risk: The Investment Case for a Clean Competitive Canada F or years, Persian Gulf mon- archies like the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Qatar have lured U.S. tech companies and Wall Street capital to team up on projects, dangling friendly investment terms and opulent office hubs with luxury towers, cappuccino bars and bikini- friendly beach clubs. Deploying their giant sover- eign wealth funds, the govern- ments of these countries have moved aggressively to break their overwhelming dependence on oil and gas revenues. And investors, seeking lucrative new markets, have rushed to oblige. Silicon Valley, in particular, has bought into the Persian Gulf. Tech giants including Nvidia, Microsoft and Oracle all poured money into large-scale facilities across the region, including data centres to power their enormous and growing bets on artificial intelligence. But the war with Iran sudden- ly threatens to undermine that cozy business relationship. The scope of the conflict has stunned the Gulf nations and their Western business partners over the past week, and raised serious questions for both about the future of these investments – with trillions of dollars hanging in the balance. After the United States and Israel launched co-ordinated strikes against Iran last weekend, the Iranians’ response included attacks against non-military tar- gets in countries across the region. Iranian drones hit two Ama- zon Web Services data centres in the United Arab Emirates and damaged one in Bahrain earlier in the week. Schools and offices have gone remote. The United States shut its embassies in Kuwait, Lebanon and Saudi Ara- bia. On Thursday, a billionaire businessman in Dubai lashed out at U.S. President Donald Trump on social media for starting the war. The Financial Times report- ed on Friday that a handful of Gulf states were considering whether to pull back on overseas investments because of the fi- nancial impact of the conflict. Anxiety is “through the roof,” Mona Yacoubian, Middle East program director at Washing- ton’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, said, describing the mood at an iftar dinner in Washington this week. “This is a nightmare scenario for these countries, which have staked so much to becoming a superconnector region in the world,” Ms. Yacoubian said. “Dreams are built on the need for stability and a lack of con- flict.” For Western investors, the stakes have been rising as AI spending surges in the Persian Gulf. Stargate UAE, operated by OpenAI and Oracle and powered by top-line Nvidia chips, started in May with a splashy ceremony in Abu Dhabi, featuring OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang. It is set to be the world’s biggest data centre outside the United States. In December, the State Department unveiled “Pax Sili- ca,” a declaration signed by 11 countries, including Israel, the UAE and Qatar, pledging to co-ordinate development of AI infrastructure. Gulf countries could be an important part of the build-out, given their prized advantages: Wedged between Asia, Africa and the Middle East, and a middle distance from Europe, the region has plentiful land, cheap electric- ity and willing populations. Data centres have already pro- liferated across the Persian Gulf, with 61 in Saudi Arabia and 57 in the Emirates, according to Data- Center Map, an industry intelli- gence tool. All that makes the Gulf “an emerging epicenter of AI infrastructure globally,” Ms. Yacoubian said. But risks that seemed remote a week ago now look far more real – with the potential to spread beyond the region. “The vulnerability is no longer hypo- thetical,” said Kristian Alexan- der, senior fellow and lead researcher at the Rabdan Securi- ty & Defense Institute in Abu Dhabi. Among the highest risk factors could be the fiber-optic cables that snake under the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea – the region’s two choke points, not only for oil shipments but for da- ta, too. Among the world’s most concentrated digital corridors, they are crucial to keeping parts of Europe and Asia connected to the internet, and experts fear they could be sabotaged, or en- tangled or dislodged amid chaot- ic fighting. Such an event has already occurred. In 2024, four major Red Sea undersea cables were dam- aged when Houthi rebels struck a ship, disrupting about a quar- ter of the data traffic linking Eu- rope and Asia, including the Mid- dle East. Although data was quickly rerouted, it took months to fully restore the cables. “It shows how quickly connec- tivity can be degraded, rather than fully go dark,” Mr. Alexan- der said. Until a week ago, the violent risks seemed far-fetched. “Before Feb. 28, the assumption was that a cyber risk was constant but kinetic risk was low probability,” Mr. Alexander said. Indeed, for years, investors in the Persian Gulf have felt worlds removed from the Middle East’s political strife. But to some observers, that feeling of safety seemed to be an illusion. In 2023, two weeks before Hamas waged a massacre on Israelis, setting off the Gaza war, Matt Gertken, chief geopol- itical analyst for BCA Research, travelled to the Gulf to meet with hedge funds and other Western investors. He offered a dire warning, telling them that the Israelis appeared set to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities at some point, and that the United States was likely to join them. That could lead to a widening regional war, he told them, potentially threat- ening their business – perhaps even their Gulf lifestyle. Investors were deeply skepti- cal. “I do geopolitical forecasting for a living,” Mr. Gertken said. “But I was sensitive to the fact that I was in Dubai saying: ‘You know, things are going to get bad for a while.’ It is not what people wanted to hear. It was very con- trarian.” NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE With war in Iran’s sheer scope, Big Tech faces uncertain future in Persian Gulf VIVIENNE WALT ANALYSIS