Updated July 2026. If you arrived here looking for the $80,000 Canada Secondary Suite Loan Program, the short answer is that it does not exist. It was announced, widely reported, and then cancelled before a single application was ever accepted. This page explains what happened and what funding is actually available now.

What Was Promised

In December 2024, the federal government announced it would double the Canada Secondary Suite Loan Program limit to $80,000, at 2% interest over 15 years, with a launch planned for early 2025. It was a genuinely attractive offer and a lot of homeowners built plans around it.

The launch never came. Homeowners went looking for an application portal through 2025 and couldn’t find one, because there wasn’t one. The 2025 federal budget confirmed the program was never operational and would not be implemented, on the reasoning that it overlapped with the mortgage refinancing changes that had already gone ahead.

British Columbia’s own Secondary Suite Incentive Program — the forgivable loan of up to $40,000 — closed to new applications on March 30, 2025. The province cited financial conditions and the expectation that the federal program would replace it. The federal program then didn’t happen.

So both doors closed within a year of each other. If you find a page still advertising either one, it hasn’t been updated.

What Actually Exists

One federal measure did proceed: changes to insured mortgage refinancing specifically for adding a secondary suite, in effect for mortgage insurance applications submitted on or after January 15, 2025.

In broad terms, it allows refinancing up to 90% of your home’s post-renovation value, on properties valued up to $2 million, amortized over as long as 30 years. That last part matters more than it sounds — a longer amortization is what makes the monthly number workable while the suite is still being built.

Two conditions worth raising with your lender before you design anything:

• Some insured options require that the new unit is not used as a short-term rental. If your plan is nightly stays, confirm this first — it can change what you’re allowed to build.
• Some require the homeowner or a close relative to occupy one of the units.

Terms vary between lenders and insurers, and they change. I’m a designer, not a mortgage broker — verify the current rules with your lender before committing to a scope.

Beyond that: home equity lines of credit, conventional refinancing, and occasional municipal programs. Some municipalities also charge you — a few in the Lower Mainland have introduced annual secondary suite fees collected with property taxes, so check what your city adds to the ongoing cost.

Financing Was Never the Hard Part

Here’s what I’d actually say to anyone who was counting on that $80,000. Losing it hurts, but the projects that fail rarely fail for want of a low-interest loan. They fail because the suite was never feasible on that lot, and nobody checked early enough.

The questions that decide whether you have a project at all:

• Does zoning permit a self-contained unit here? Rules differ between Vancouver, Burnaby, Coquitlam, and the North Shore, and they’ve been moving quickly.
• Is there ceiling height? Basement suites live or die on this. Underpinning to gain headroom can cost more than the rest of the suite combined.
• Can you get a separate entrance that works? Not just legally — one that doesn’t ruin the main house’s layout or the yard.
• Do the windows meet egress? Bedrooms need compliant escape openings. Enlarging below-grade windows means excavation and sometimes structural work.
• Parking, servicing, fire separation. The unglamorous requirements that quietly set the budget.

A feasibility review answers all of these before you spend anything meaningful. It’s the cheapest stage of the project and the one that prevents the expensive mistakes.

The Case Still Works

A legal secondary suite still adds rental income, still houses family, and still adds real value to the property. None of that depended on the loan program. It just means the money comes from equity rather than from Ottawa.

If you want to know what your lot will actually support before you talk to a lender, that’s the conversation to start with. Call 604-929-6696 and ask for Aryo.