Will Canada get rid of the mortgage stress test?

Is Canada getting rid of the mortgage stress test?

There's no announcement that it is. As of November 1, 2026, OSFI's minimum qualifying rate page, last modified January 29, 2026, still sets the rate at the greater of your contract rate + 2 points or 5.25%. The insured version of the test is written into federal regulations and hasn't changed either.

What OSFI has done is open the question. It said in November 2024 that it would consider whether a prescribed qualifying rate is still needed once its loan-to-income limits were in place. Those limits now apply, and OSFI's later statements keep the stress test alongside them. Nothing we found sets a date for a decision, so this page reports what has been said and what a change would involve, not what will happen.

What has OSFI actually said?

Read in order, the statements narrow the test rather than end it. The only change to who gets tested since 2021 has been for straight switches at renewal: insured ones under the 2023 Mortgage Charter, uninsured ones from November 21, 2024. The November 2024 backgrounder raised the bigger question; the January 2026 release and consultation kept the rule in place while OSFI rewrites the guideline around it. The annual report is OSFI's 2025–2026 annual report, chapter 2: it says OSFI assessed B-20's effectiveness, without announcing any change to the qualifying rate.

Industry groups have asked OSFI to drop the qualifying rate, including in a letter in December 2025. Requests aren't decisions, and OSFI hasn't responded with a change.

Who would have to act, and for which borrowers?

"The stress test" is really several rules that happen to use the same formula. Ending one doesn't end the others:

So even if OSFI dropped its rule tomorrow, a first-time buyer with 5% down would still be tested at the contract rate + 2 points or 5.25%, at every lender, until the Department of Finance amended its regulations. The province-by-province table covers the credit-union rules in detail.

Do loan-to-income limits replace the stress test?

Not so far. Since each bank's 2025 fiscal year, OSFI caps the share of a lender's new uninsured mortgages that are more than 4.5 times the borrower's income. For this page's $172,000 household, that's any loan above $774,000.

The key word is share. OSFI says the limit "is not a limit on each individual loan". A lender can still approve you above 4.5 times income; it just has to keep enough of its other new lending below that line. The stress test works the other way: it applies to every borrower, one loan at a time. OSFI's January 2026 statement keeps both, and its annual report says it monitors uninsured lending above 4.5 times income every quarter.

What would removing it mean for what you can borrow?

Here is the arithmetic for an uninsured buyer if lenders qualified them at their contract rate instead. The rate is 4.58%, the Bank of Canada's August 2026 average for new uninsured 5-year fixed mortgages, so today's qualifying rate is 6.58%.

The pattern holds across incomes. Here are four more uninsured households, each with $400 a month of other debts:

At this rate the test trims buying power by about 12% for each of these households. With the test, none of these loans goes past OSFI's 4.5× line; without it, all of them do.

Two cautions. Lenders set their own debt-service methods under B-20 and could keep a buffer of their own. And the table can't tell you how prices would respond. To see your own gap today, use the stress test calculator or read what the stress test costs.

How have past changes been announced?

Each change to the qualifying-rate formula since 2010 was announced before it took effect. Here is the gap between each announcement and its effective date:

The notice ranged from 12 to 76 days, and one announced change, the 2020 insured benchmark, never took effect. That's a record of how Ottawa and OSFI have worked, not a promise about the next change. The thing to look for is a dated release from OSFI or the Department of Finance with an effective date, not a headline.

What do headlines get wrong about the stress test going away?

• "OSFI dropped the stress test for renewals." Renewals with your own lender haven't been retested since B-20's 2017 letter. What changed on November 21, 2024 was narrower: uninsured straight switches to another federally regulated lender. Borrowing more or adding years still means requalifying.
• "Loan-to-income limits replaced the stress test." OSFI's January 2026 release says the opposite: B-20's debt-service expectations continue alongside them.
• "OSFI said it would remove the test once LTI limits arrived." It said it would consider whether the rule is still needed. We found no decision.
• "The new credit-risk guideline scraps the test." The consultation folds B-20 into one chapter. It proposes no change to the qualifying rate and no date to end it.
• "If OSFI drops it, nobody gets tested." Insured mortgages, Saskatchewan credit unions and Quebec caisses each have their own rule.

What should you watch, and when?

• December 2026: OSFI's annual review. OSFI says it reviews the qualifying rate at least once a year. Its 2022 and 2023 confirmations came in December; we found none for 2024 or 2025.
• Any time: the final credit-risk guideline. The consultation closed July 29, 2026. The final text will show how the qualifying rate is carried into the new guideline.
• OSFI's quarterly releases. January 2026's kept B-20 alongside loan-to-income limits; watch for different wording.
• December 2026: Quebec. The AMF guideline is reviewed each December.
• The insured regulations. Any change for insured buyers would appear as an amendment from the Department of Finance.

The full timeline since 2010 is on our history of the qualifying rate page.