The Canadian mutual fund industry returned to positive net sales in October, managing just under $300 million in overall net sales.

According to figures released Tuesday by the Investment Funds Institute of Canada, total net sales for October were $282.5 million.

That’s up from net redemptions of $205.1 million recorded the previous month, but is significantly lower than net sales of $1.75 billion recorded last October.

Long-term net sales in October 2011 were $637.8 million and money market redemptions were $355.3 million.

Year-to-date, total net sales sit at $19.6 billion, and aggregate long-term net sales are $24.8 billion.

Bond funds led the sales charts in October, with $1.5 billion in net sales, up from $1.04 billion in September. This was directly offset by equity fund net redemptions of $1.52 billion in the month, down from $1.61 billion in September.

Year-to-date, net redemptions for equity funds now total $7.54 billion, compared to $9.1 billion for the same period last year.

Balanced funds recorded $566.9 million of net sales in October.

Total mutual fund assets under management for October were $773.7 billion, up by about $25.1 billion, or 3.4%, from the previous month.

On the year, total mutual fund assets are still down slightly, by 0.62%, from $778.5 billion in December 2010.