Rolling credit card debt into your mortgage almost always lowers the monthly payment. Whether it lowers what you actually pay depends entirely on what you do with the money you free up. Here is the arithmetic, using the average balance an Albertan is carrying.
What minimum payments actually cost
The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada describes a typical credit card minimum payment as the greater of a flat amount, usually around $10, or a percentage of the balance, typically 3%. Its own illustration of card interest uses 19% on regular purchases and 22% on cash advances.
Put those two published figures together on the Alberta average balance of $25,082 and the result is uncomfortable. The first minimum payment is about $752. Paying only the minimum every month from there, the balance takes just over 29 years to clear and costs about $27,805 in interest, which is more than the balance you started with.
That is not a trick of the example. It is what a declining minimum payment does at that interest rate.
What consolidating actually does
First, the part people misunderstand. If you have enough equity, the cards and the line of credit are paid out in full on closing day. Not gradually, not partially. The balances go to zero, the 19% stops that day, and what you are left with is one mortgage payment instead of four or five obligations.
That is the whole point, and it is why the first question is how much equity you have rather than how much the payment would be. A refinance is capped at 80% of your home’s value, with your existing mortgage balance coming out of that first. If what is left covers the debt, you can clear all of it. If it does not, we start with the highest interest rate debt rather than the biggest balance, because that is where the money is actually leaking. A $6,000 card at 19% is costing you more than a $20,000 car loan at 6%, so the card goes first.
Then you choose how fast you repay it
Once the debt is cleared, the balance sits inside your mortgage, and you decide what to pay against it. I am not going to quote you a mortgage rate, because the one that applies to you depends on your file. But the shape of the choice is clear enough using 5.25%, the floor lenders must use when testing whether you can afford a payment. Run your own numbers on the calculator on the homepage.
Keep paying what you were paying. You were putting $752 a month toward those cards. Keep putting it toward the mortgage and that $25,082 is gone in about three years, at a cost of roughly $2,065 in interest. This is the version that actually gets you out of the debt, and getting you into the best financial position possible is the job, not just getting you a smaller payment.
Or take the lower payment, on purpose. Spread over the mortgage, that balance costs about $168 a month at 5.25%. If the monthly pressure is the real problem, a new baby, a job change, a business finding its feet, then freeing up almost $600 a month is a legitimate reason to do this, and there is no shame in choosing it.
What you want to avoid is the third version, where the lower payment was never a decision, just what happened. Left alone for the full 20 years, that same balance costs about $15,291 in interest, and over 25 years roughly $19,758.
Same debt, same household, three endings. Minimum payments on the card: 29 years, $27,805 in interest. Consolidated and left alone for 20 years: $15,291. Consolidated and still paying the old $752: three years, $2,065.
What it takes to get there
- Enough equity to clear the balances. The 80% ceiling is what decides whether the debt can be paid out entirely or only in part.
- Qualification. The new mortgage has to pass the lender’s debt service ratios, calculated at the greater of your contract rate plus 2% or 5.25%. Clearing the cards helps those ratios, which is part of why this can work.
- The cost of breaking the current mortgage. Usually the higher of three months’ interest or the interest rate differential, plus legal, discharge and appraisal fees, and repayment of any cash back you received.
Those costs are why timing matters. If your term ends within the next year, compare doing this now against doing it at renewal, when there is no penalty. There is more on both paths on my refinancing page and my mortgage renewals page.
When this is the wrong answer
If the cards fill back up, you now have the cards and a bigger mortgage. That is the most common way this goes wrong, and it is worth being honest with yourself about before you start rather than eighteen months later.
If there is not enough equity to cover the balances, refinancing cannot solve it either. And if the debt has grown past what your home could cover, the right conversation is with a non-profit credit counselling agency or a licensed insolvency trustee, not with me. I would rather tell you that than put you through an application that cannot help.
If you want to look at your own numbers
Bring a list of what you owe, the payment on each, your mortgage statement and your renewal date. That is enough to see whether the arithmetic works in your favour. If it does not, I will say so.
Sources: The $25,082 Alberta average, the $22,699 national average, the $134.2 billion in national credit card balances and the 65% of consumers who pay their balance in full are from Equifax Canada’s Non-Mortgage Delinquency Growth Slows in Second Quarter, but Ontario Homeowners Remain Under Pressure, published August 24, 2026 and covering the second quarter of 2026. The minimum payment structure (the greater of a flat amount, usually $10, or typically 3% of the balance) is from the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada’s Paying off your credit card, and the 19% purchase and 22% cash advance illustration is from FCAC’s How credit cards work. The 80% refinance ceiling matches the minimum 20% equity FCAC sets out in Home equity lines of credit. The qualifying rate of the greater of the contract rate plus 2% or 5.25% is from CMHC Refinance. Prepayment penalty structure is from FCAC’s Mortgage fees: Prepayment penalties, and the other costs of breaking a term are from FCAC’s Breaking your mortgage contract. The payoff periods, payments and interest totals in this article were calculated from those published rules, with Canadian semi-annual compounding on the mortgage figures, and are illustrations rather than an offer. Your own rate, qualification and costs will differ. This article is general information, not advice on your specific file, and not debt counselling.