Canadian households are drowning in an all-time high of $1.5 trillion worth of debt, according to a report released Tuesday.

The Certified General Accountants Association of Canada study found if household debt was spread evenly among all Canadians, a family with two children would owe an estimated $176,461.

"The debt of a typical household is rising," said Rock Lefebvre, CGA-Canada's vice-president of research and standards.

"And the financial situation of certain groups of households is much worse than average and continues to deteriorate. This is concealed if you focus only on the national or aggregate picture."

The report found single-parents, households with an income of $50,000 or less and retired Canadians more likely to be facing bleak financial situations.

Two-thirds of single-parent families have more debt than couples with no children and it is also the only category in the survey where debt increases with age.

The survey also found more Canadians carrying debt into retirement, with one-third of retired households carrying a debt of $60,000 and 17 per cent in debt $100,000 or more.

Meanwhile, households with an income of $50,000 or less are six times more likely to be vulnerable in terms of debt-service ratio.

The debt-service ratio shows the current cost of servicing debt and assesses an individual's capacity to honour debt obligations.

More than half of respondents said their household income remained unchanged or decreased over the past year, and even in those homes where income increased, 86 per cent said it was only a modest raise.

Lefebvre told CTV's News Channel on Tuesday that Canadians were saving as much as 18 per cent of their disposable income about 30 years ago, while Canadians saved just more than 4.5 per cent last year.

"Generally we can attribute much of this to consumerism and access to credit," he said.

Lefebvre said both individuals and the government need to take a more prudent approach.

"It really is about tightening down the hatches," he said. "In fact we've been advocating for a number of years now that Canadians need to be perhaps educated a little bit."

He said there's also an immediate need to look at lending reforms that help Canadians manage their debt more effectively and get away from making minimum payments on credit cards and lines of credit.

"We have to become wealth accumulators rather than spenders," he said.

Laurie Campbell of Credit Canada said the report suggests many Canadians "are on the tip of financial disaster."

According to Campbell, young adults who graduate from university with massive student loans and credit-card balances, and the elderly who failed to save for retirement or who are helping financially strapped children, are most at risk from high debt loads.

Campbell said the first step to climbing out of debt is to draw up a budget.

"I think that the point is it is mismanagement to a certain degree," Campbell told CTV News Channel. "And people need to have a good handle on where their money is going, what is their cash flow. They know what's coming in and they should know what's going out."

Campbell said next steps include paying off high-interest debt, such as credit cards, first, or consolidating high-interest loans onto a low-interest line of credit.

Other facts from the survey:

• Fifty-seven per cent of indebted respondents said daily living expenses are the main cause of their increasing debt.
• The debt-to-income ratio in households reached a record high of 146.9 per cent in the first quarter of 2011, compared to 144 per cent in late 2009.
• Twenty-seven per cent of non-retired Canadians are not saving, even for retirement.