Debt settlement, credit counselling ,or consumer proposal?

I would first look into re-financing the house. If you could pull some equity out of the property and use this to pay down your credit card debts and the line of credit, that would be one of the best ways to reduce your monthly outlay and still protect your credit rating. You will find that this will likely be more affordable than credit counselling as they will still require the debt to be paid in full, but it will likely be over a shorter time frame, which may make it difficult to keep up with.

If re-financing isn’t going to be possible, then I would likely look at the consumer proposal. I am not a big fan of debt management / settlement plans as there is no control or protection for you as the debtor. Many of the places that offer these types of services make great promises, but because they have no backing in the legislation it becomes difficult for them to fulfil these promises. Very commonly I see people who have tried a debt settlement plan, paid in good faith for 5 or 6 months, only to fine out that only 1/2 of their creditors were willing to look at it and because none of the payments were distributed to the creditors during this period of time, the other creditors had implemented a garnishee or some other type of action that ended up making things more difficult.

This doesn’t happen with the consumer proposal as the legislation provides a set of rules for all creditors, they are legally bound to entertain and participate in the proposal process. So you don’t find this happening.