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Before you set your sights on anything sourced from the US, you need to consider import regulations - it can be difficult-to-impossible to import car kits from the US. There's no particular reason for this that I can discern, it's just a regulation that's there.
That being said, you should probably limit your search to kits available in Canada. I did a LOT of looking, couldn't find anything remotely within my price range (the closest was the Canadian Caterham dealership, an hour away from me - their finished, BEC cars run around $90,000 CDN now. I don't even know if they'll supply a car in "kit" form anymore.
As others have said, taking on an unfinished car from someone else might be a good start.
Honestly, though, building & welding your own frame has several advantages. First, it's not rocket surgery. I taught myself to MIG weld as I built my Locost frame, and I'd stack its welding up against any other car. Sure, I had some welds I wasn't happy with, but an angry grinder and two minutes on them allowed me to do it again, and get it right. Every single one of 'em is perfect now. By the time you've done a couple of dozen welds, your imperfect ones will largely become a memory.
Bear in mind, too, that the construction design of these cars makes them immensely strong. A flawed weld or two won't make it as weak as a brand-new car's spot-welded sheet metal structure, IMHO.
Building your own frame allows you to build precisely the car that YOU want, rather than having to adapt to someone else's ideas. Looking back on it, the frame build was, by far, the easiest part of the build. My initial perception was that the frame build was an immense hurdle, and everything after that was easy-peasy. Boy, was that ever wrong! The frame was a snap. You choose a set of plans (most of us, I suspect, are using Ehrlich's free plans or a modified design based on them), buy the requisite amount of steel square tubing, cut it to the given dimensions according to the plans, and start tacking & welding it all together.
You'd soon find that your welding skills far surpass what you think they are, and are more than sufficient to build a strong, rigid, safe structure.
Equipment-wise, I did almost all of my frame welding with a second-hand, cheap, Italian, 110V unit. Although I spent as much time fixing it as I did welding with it, it was more than up to the job. I ended up loving welding so much that I recently bought myself a nice, new Miller 220V unit, and an aluminum spool gun to go with it.
Consider what you want for a rear end, transmission, engine etc. before you start building, so you know what plans will work for you. Ehrlich's plans are well engineered, and pretty much foolproof, too.
After the frame's done, the actual hard work begins, and it's the minutia that can bog you down, depending on your choice of donor (or, in my case, lack of one). I chose to do it the hard way, with no single donor at all. Instead, I opted to choose & source parts from all over, to get precisely what I wanted, rather than be limited due to what I've got sitting out in the shed from the donor. It's more expensive my way (although not a LOT more expensive), and probably slower, but then again, I don't have to make any compromises.
Anyway, my advice would be to not give up on the idea of building a frame yourself. It's immensely rewarding, probably cheaper in the long run, and you get exactly what you wanted.
Just my $.02' worth...
_________________ Scratch building, at continental-drift speed, a custom McSoreley-design framed, dual-Weber 45DCOE carburated, Zetec-engined, ridiculously fast money pit. http://zetec7.webs.com/
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Trial an error is cheaper as costs go but not time wise
