Canada's 10 Most Financially Broken Cities: The 2024 Insolvency Data Your Mayor Isn't Talking About

Sudbury has the worst insolvency rate of any major Canadian city — 5.8 per 1,000 adults in 2024 — and it’s not even the city deteriorating fastest.

The Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy publishes per-city insolvency rates annually across 35 Census Metropolitan Areas. The figures below are proposals and bankruptcies combined: every person who formally declared they couldn’t service their debt. The national average is approximately 3.4 per 1,000. Five Canadian cities cleared 5.0 last year. One cleared 5.8.

These are those cities, ranked, with the five-year trend and the mechanism behind each number — because the mechanism is why it won’t fix itself.

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Sudbury, Ontario: 5.8 per 1,000 — 1 in 172 Adults Filed Last Year (↑ 14% YoY)

At 5.8 insolvencies per 1,000 adults, Sudbury’s rate is roughly 70% above the national average. In a city of approximately 165,000 people with an adult population around 130,000, that’s approximately 754 insolvency filings in a single year — about two people per day walking into a trustee’s office because they’ve exhausted every other option.

Five-year trend: 5.1 → 3.7 → 4.5 → 5.1 → 5.8. The dip to 3.7 in 2021 was CERB and the debt payment moratorium. The trajectory since is straight up.

Sudbury’s economy runs on mining (nickel, copper, gold) and public-sector employment. Both are structurally volatile — resource prices cycle hard, government services face ongoing austerity. The problem is not that Sudbury had a bad year. It’s that the industries producing the city’s income have not changed, the income distribution has not changed, and the insolvency rate is no longer a warning signal. It has become the baseline. The 5.8 number in 2024 represents approximately where Sudbury sits between shocks, not a peak.

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Saint John, NB: 5.6 per 1,000 — In the Top 2 for Five Straight Years (flat YoY)

Saint John doesn’t have a debt crisis. It has a debt condition.

At 5.6 per 1,000 — essentially unchanged from last year — Saint John has now ranked in the top two of Canada’s insolvency rate table for five consecutive years. The five-year progression: 6.0 → 4.7 → 4.9 → 5.6 → 5.6.

The 2021 dip to 4.7 was COVID supports. The bounce back to 5.6 was what the underlying economy looks like without them.

Saint John is the oldest incorporated city in Canada and has been fighting economic contraction for decades. Irving Industries dominates the private sector, which creates a dual dynamic: those with Irving jobs have relative stability; everyone else competes in a thin, low-wage labour market. The city’s median household income consistently runs below the provincial median, which runs below the national median.

When you earn less, your margin for error is smaller. A car repair, a medical bill, a layoff that lasts three months too long — these are debt crises in Saint John that would be uncomfortable inconveniences in Calgary.

The 6.0 rate in 2020 represents the pre-CERB peak. Saint John is within 7% of its all-time worst rate right now.

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Trois-Rivières, QC: 5.6 per 1,000 — Up 22% in Five Years With No English Coverage (↑ 3.7% YoY)

Trois-Rivières sits at 5.6 per 1,000 and has risen from 4.6 five years ago — a 22% increase over that window that has received essentially zero English-language media attention.

The city of approximately 160,000 is Quebec’s third-largest metro and historically relied on pulp and paper manufacturing, most of which has left. The economic transition has not fully replaced those jobs. Average employment income runs below both the provincial and national medians.

Quebec’s insolvency landscape is also structurally different from other provinces — Quebec civil law governs debt collection differently, and the province has its own voluntary deposit system (dépôt volontaire) as an alternative to bankruptcy. The fact that Trois-Rivières still posts a 5.6 rate under that framework says something about the depth of the problem.

The year-over-year increase — small as it looks — has been consistent. This is not a spike. It is a slow, steady climb.

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Belleville, ON: 5.6 per 1,000 — Debuted in the Top 4 With No Ramp-Up Period (new to CMA data)

Belleville’s appearance in the top tier is the stealth story on this list.

The city shows no data in the five-year trend for 2020–2023 — it crossed the threshold to be included in the OSB’s CMA reporting only in 2024, having previously fallen below the population cutoff or reporting threshold. Its debut rate of 5.6 per 1,000 is not a city in gradual decline. It is a city that arrived at the top of the list without warning.

Belleville sits in Hastings County, in what is sometimes called the “poverty belt” of Southern Ontario — the corridor from Belleville through Peterborough where low wages, limited industry diversity, and high housing costs relative to incomes have created persistent financial stress for decades. The city draws overflow from Toronto and Kingston both, with households stretching into homeownership at prices that require two incomes and zero disruption to sustain.

When disruption arrives — a layoff, a separation, a health event — the math collapses quickly.

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Barrie, ON: 5.4 per 1,000 — The Toronto Escape That Didn’t Work (↑ 20% YoY, fastest in Canada)

The fastest-moving number on this list belongs to a city that was supposed to be a success story.

Barrie absorbed tens of thousands of households during the 2020–2022 pandemic housing migration. People priced out of Toronto bought in Barrie because they could work remotely and the housing was cheaper. Prices ran up hard. Then rates ran up harder. Then return-to-office mandates started.

The insolvency rate trajectory tells the story: 3.9 → 3.4 → 4.0 → 4.5 → 5.4. That is a 38% increase in three years. The 20% jump from 2023 to 2024 alone is the largest single-year increase of any city on this list.

Barrie now sits at 5.4 per 1,000 — a rate that would have been unthinkable for this city a decade ago. The people who moved there believing they were solving a housing affordability problem discovered they had traded one kind of financial vulnerability for another.

The variable-rate mortgages they signed at 1.6% renewed at 5.5%. The commute they thought would be temporary became permanent because offices reopened. The equity they expected to build has been sitting flat or declining in a market where everyone is trying to sell at the same time.

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Lethbridge, AB: 5.4 per 1,000 — Alberta’s Agricultural Stress Is Now in the Insolvency Data (new to CMA data)

Like Belleville, Lethbridge appears for the first time in the 2024 data at 5.4 per 1,000 — no prior trend data in the OSB’s CMA table, then a debut in the top six.

Lethbridge is Alberta’s fourth-largest city, with an economy anchored in agriculture, retail trade, and healthcare. It has historically been more insulated from oil-price volatility than Calgary or Edmonton. The fact that it now posts a rate comparable to Sudbury and Barrie suggests the agricultural income pressures of 2023–2024 — feed costs, equipment financing, drought impacts in southern Alberta — have filtered through the regional economy into household finances.

Alberta has no provincial sales tax, which helps. But the province also has higher average debt loads than most of Canada, and Lethbridge has been running above provincial unemployment averages. When that combination intersects with a sharp increase in debt-servicing costs, the insolvency filing rate is the lagging indicator that shows up 12–18 months later.

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St. John’s, NL: 5.0 per 1,000 — The Province Has 14 Debt Trustees for 540,000 People (↑ 2% YoY)

St. John’s sits at 5.0 per 1,000 and has been above 4.0 for four consecutive years: 4.0 → 3.6 → 4.0 → 4.9 → 5.0.

This matters more in Newfoundland than almost anywhere else in Canada because of what it means systemically. Newfoundland has the highest Financial Stress Index of any province in Canada according to the CollectorHQ Financial Stress Dashboard, driven by the highest unemployment rate nationally (9.2%) and acute EI claims pressure. St. John’s is the province’s economic engine — if the engine is posting a 5.0 insolvency rate, the communities outside St. John’s are dealing with something considerably worse that the CMA data doesn’t capture.

There is also a supply problem layered on top of the demand problem: Newfoundland has just 14 Licensed Insolvency Trustees for the entire province — a coverage issue we’ve analyzed separately.

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Saguenay, QC: 5.0 per 1,000 — Jumped Sharply in 2023 and Has Stayed There (flat YoY)

Saguenay’s five-year trend — 4.5 → 4.3 → 4.2 → 5.0 → 5.0 — shows a city that jumped sharply in 2023 and has stayed there.

The Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean region built its economy around aluminum smelting and forestry. Both industries have faced headwinds: aluminum is energy-intensive and subject to global trade volatility; the forestry sector has been squeezed by U.S. softwood lumber tariffs for years. The employment base has not diversified meaningfully, and the region’s median income sits below the provincial average.

A flat rate at 5.0 is not good news. It means the rate has not gotten worse — but it also means no structural improvement has occurred to bring it down.

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Moncton, NB: 4.9 per 1,000 — Atlantic Canada’s “Success Story” Hasn’t Reached Everyone (flat YoY)

Moncton is the quiet outlier on this list: a city that has been growing, attracting interprovincial migration, and receiving positive economic press — while quietly maintaining one of the highest insolvency rates in Canada.

At 4.9 per 1,000, Moncton has been between 4.7 and 5.3 for five consecutive years: 5.3 → 4.7 → 4.7 → 4.9 → 4.9. The narrative that Moncton is Atlantic Canada’s economic success story and the insolvency data are not yet reconciled. Growth in aggregate does not mean the existing residents are doing better — it often means wealthier arrivals are raising averages while entrenched lower-income households continue to fall behind.

Moncton also sits in a province with a bilingual labour market that creates segmentation: English-speaking and French-speaking workers often compete in distinct streams, and credential recognition barriers keep many qualified immigrants underemployed. The insolvency rate reflects the people who got left out of the growth story.

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St. Catharines–Niagara, ON: 4.8 per 1,000 — Up 60% in Five Years, Still Accelerating (↑ 14% YoY)

The most alarming long-term trend on this list belongs to St. Catharines–Niagara.

Five years of data: 3.0 → 2.7 → 3.2 → 4.2 → 4.8. That is a 60% increase in five years — the steepest sustained climb of any city in the OSB’s CMA dataset. The region has gone from below-average to solidly in the top 10, with no sign of deceleration.

St. Catharines and the Niagara region have struggled with deindustrialization since the General Motors cuts of the early 2000s. But the current acceleration isn’t legacy industrial decline — it’s the collision of stagnant wages, rising housing costs (fuelled partly by retirees and Toronto spillover), and a service-dominated labour market that doesn’t pay enough to service 2022-vintage mortgage debt.

The 14% year-over-year increase means this number is not plateauing. St. Catharines is on a trajectory that, if it continues, puts it in the top five within two years.

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Ontario Has Five of the Ten Worst Cities Because the Pain Radiates Outward

The pattern in this data isn’t random. Five of the ten worst cities are in Ontario. That’s not because Ontarians are financially irresponsible — it’s because Ontario’s housing market created a debt-export problem.

When Toronto became unaffordable, people moved to Barrie, Belleville, and St. Catharines. They stretched to buy. They signed mortgages at 2020 rates. They assumed remote work was permanent or that the commute was manageable. When rates reset and offices reopened, the financial structure that allowed them to move broke — and the insolvency filings followed them to their new cities, 12 to 18 months later.

The 2021 dip you see in nearly every city’s five-year trend is CERB, debt payment deferrals, and courts operating at reduced capacity. That dip is not a recovery — it’s a pause. The trajectory before 2020 and the trajectory since 2022 are the same line.

The more useful signal than the current rate is the trend direction. By that measure: Barrie, St. Catharines, and St. John’s are the ones to watch. Their acceleration is steeper than their absolute positions suggest.

The OSB’s city-level data is published annually and largely unreported outside financial press. The provincial-level breakdown and national totals update monthly. All rates cited here are per 1,000 adults from the 2024 OSB CMA insolvency rate tables.