Last reviewed: 15 September 2026

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Where a new home still isn't legally required to carry a warranty

Four provinces covered elsewhere in this Library — Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec — legally require a new-home builder to carry statutory warranty coverage. A fifth, Manitoba, passed a similar law and then repealed it before it ever took effect. That leaves five provinces — Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador — where a new-home warranty has never been a legal requirement at all.

Saskatchewan: coverage that's common, on a program that isn't mandated by law

Saskatchewan's own home-building industry created a new-home warranty program in 1976 — one of the oldest in the country — and enrollment in some form of third-party warranty coverage is common for new construction in the province today. But unlike Alberta's New Home Buyer Protection Act, Ontario's New Home Warranties Plan Act, British Columbia's Homeowner Protection Act, or Quebec's Building Act warranty regulation, Saskatchewan has no equivalent dedicated statute requiring a builder to enroll a home, or a buyer to receive coverage, as a matter of provincial law. Coverage there is a private, contractual arrangement between a builder and a warranty provider — common practice, not a legal mandate.

Why coverage is common anyway: the mortgage, not the statute, is doing the work

Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) guidance on its own mortgage loan insurance program is direct about this: evidence of enrollment in a recognized new-home warranty program is generally required for CMHC-insured mortgage financing on new construction in provinces where such a program exists — a lender-and-insurer condition that applies whether or not the province's own law requires it. That's the real reason coverage is close to standard practice in Saskatchewan despite the absence of a statute: most buyers are financing through a lender that treats warranty enrollment as a condition of the loan, not because provincial law requires the builder to provide it.

Atlantic Canada: the same voluntary model, run region-wide

New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador likewise have no dedicated statute making new-home warranty coverage mandatory. A single private, nonprofit new-home warranty program has operated across all four provinces since 1976, and many of the region's builders are enrolled as members — but, as with Saskatchewan, that coverage exists because builders choose to join and lenders expect to see it, not because any of the four provinces' own consumer-protection statutes compel it the way Ontario's or Alberta's do.

What this means if you're buying in one of these five provinces

Because no statute requires it, there's also no government-run registry to check the way an Alberta or Ontario buyer can verify a builder against a public list (see our Alberta and Ontario pages). The only real verification available is the coverage certificate itself: ask your builder, in writing, for proof of current enrollment in a third-party new-home warranty program before you sign anything, exactly as point 1 of our standard asks for pre-purchase disclosure generally — and if you're financing the purchase, ask your lender directly whether warranty enrollment is a condition of your specific mortgage, since that condition (not provincial law) is what actually protects most buyers in these five provinces today.