A plain reference list of the federal and provincial programs Grantwork prepares claims and applications for, with what each pays and when it can be applied for. If you would rather be told which ones fit your business, the Grant Finder asks four questions and gives you a shortlist.
The same five stages apply to a claim or an application. Grant work differs at a few points, noted where it does. For what the combination is actually worth, see three worked examples with the arithmetic shown.
A short introductory meeting, up to thirty minutes, to hear what your team built, where it became technically difficult, and what the money is for. If there is nothing worth pursuing, you are told at this point, at no cost. Most of the value of this call is the honesty of the answer.
A working session with the people who did the work. Each project is tested against the two requirements in the CRA’s current guidelines: was the work done to achieve a scientific or technological advancement, and was it a systematic investigation carried out by experiment or analysis. Eligible work is separated from routine work honestly, before anything is written, because a claim built on the wrong projects cannot be rescued later by good writing.
Payroll, contractor invoices, and materials are built into the expenditure base: time allocated per person, the proxy election applied, contractors counted at the prescribed rate, owner-salary caps respected. The technical narratives are written in parallel, to the form's word limits, describing the uncertainty, the work performed, and the advancement.
The claim is filed with your corporate return: the technical form, the federal schedule, and the provincial schedule, reconciled with your accountant so the numbers agree across every document. You review and approve everything before it goes; you never have to complete a form yourself.
Every file is assembled as though it will be the one reviewed, with the supporting evidence organized while the work is still fresh. If the CRA asks questions, the person who prepared the claim answers them, as part of the same engagement. On the grant side, this stage means tracking reporting obligations through to the money actually arriving.
Tax credits are claimed, not applied for, which makes them the most reliable money in the system. Grants and subsidies are applied for, and they interact with the credits, so the order matters. See what the combination is worth.
What the money actually is, who can get it, how the application works, and the conditions that decide whether it arrives. Jump to a program, or read straight through.
SR&ED is not a grant and there is no application to win. It is a tax credit you claim with your corporate return for work already done, which makes it the most reliable money in the Canadian funding system: no competition, no intake window, no project approval. What it demands instead is that the work genuinely involved a scientific or technological uncertainty your team could not resolve with standard practice, and that the investigation was systematic.
The base is built from four kinds of cost. Salaries of the people who did the work, allocated as a share of their time. A flat 55% of that salary base added as overhead under the proxy method, with no receipts required. Arm's-length Canadian contractors at 80% of the eligible portion of their invoices. Materials consumed or transformed in prototypes and trial runs at cost. Since the rules changed for taxation years beginning after 15 December 2024, capital equipment acquired for research is creditable again, refundable at 40% for a private corporation.
The deadline is absolute. A claim must be filed within 18 months of the fiscal year end. There are no extensions and no discretion, which also means a company that has never claimed can usually still recover its most recent completed year.
In March 2025 Quebec replaced its provincial research credit and seven other incentives with one credit. For taxation years beginning after 25 March 2025, CRIC is the provincial layer on a Quebec claim, and it is more generous in two ways that matter: the enhanced rate no longer depends on company size, and capital property acquired for research or pre-commercialization now qualifies alongside salaries.
The exclusion threshold is the part most companies get wrong. It is the greater of $50,000 or, for each employee working on eligible activities, the Quebec basic personal amount prorated by that employee's time on the work. The basic amount is $18,571 for 2025 and $18,952 for 2026, so any company with three or more people on eligible work is calculating from the per-employee formula rather than the $50,000 floor. Arm's-length subcontracting and payments to universities, public research centres, or research consortia count at 50%.
This is the credit that quietly funds a large part of Quebec's software sector, and it is being redirected toward artificial intelligence. Fiscal years beginning before 2026 fall under the original CDAE; years beginning after 31 December 2025 fall under CDAEIA, which requires the work to integrate significant artificial intelligence functionality rather than a marginal feature. The total rate stays at 30% under both, but the refundable share declines on a published schedule, reaching 20% refundable and 10% non-refundable for years beginning in 2028.
The old cap of $83,333 of eligible salary per employee is gone. In its place is a per-employee exclusion threshold equal to the basic personal amount for the calendar year in which the fiscal year begins, so the first roughly $19,000 of each employee's salary does not count. Eligibility is activity-based: at least 75% of gross income from a defined list of technology activities, at least 50% from the core software and systems design codes, and at least six eligible employees maintained throughout the year, each working 26 hours a week or more with at least 75% of their time on eligible activities.
Certification is mandatory and dated. Investissement Quebec must issue an annual corporate attestation plus one attestation per employee, requested within 15 months of the fiscal year end. Maintenance, updates, incident resolution, help desk work, training, and marketing are all excluded activities.
Ontario runs two credits together. The Ontario Innovation Tax Credit pays 8%, refundable, on up to $3 million of expenditure, phasing out at higher income and capital levels. The Ontario Research and Development Tax Credit pays 3.5%, non-refundable, and applies more broadly. Most Ontario claimants receive both.
British Columbia pays 10%. For a private corporation the refundable portion is calculated on the lesser of qualified British Columbia expenditures and the federal expenditure limit, which is $6 million, so the refundable credit tops out near $600,000 a year, with a non-refundable 10% available above that. The province made the credit permanent in its 2026 budget, extended refundability to eligible Canadian public corporations, and restored capital expenditures as qualified spending.
Alberta's Innovation Employment Grant pays 8% on eligible spending up to $4 million, with an enhanced rate on spending above a company's recent baseline, so it rewards growth in research rather than research alone. Saskatchewan pays 10%, refundable on the first $1 million of annual expenditure for private corporations. Manitoba pays 15%, half refundable, and fully refundable when the work is done with an eligible research institute. Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Yukon each pay 15%, refundable.
The layers interact. A provincial credit reduces the expenditure base used for the federal calculation, which is why a combined recovery is never the simple sum of the two rates, and why the province belongs in the plan from the start rather than at filing.
Ontario's Made Manufacturing Investment Tax Credit rose from 10% to 15% for eligible investments made on or after 15 May 2025, on Class 1 buildings used in manufacturing or processing and on Class 53 machinery, becoming Class 43 for acquisitions after 2025. Private corporations receive it as a refund; the 2025 budget added a 15% non-refundable version for other corporations with a ten-year carry-forward. The annual cap is shared among associated corporations, and the credit is recaptured if the property is sold, converted to non-manufacturing use, or moved out of Ontario within five years. It sunsets for property available for use after 31 December 2029.
British Columbia introduced a 15% refundable manufacturing and processing credit in its 2026 budget, for new Class 43 machinery and qualifying new buildings acquired after 31 March 2026 and before 1 April 2031, used at least 90% in manufacturing or processing. The cap is $2 million of eligible expenditure, so $300,000 of credit, shared among an associated group, and the rate then steps down by 2.5 points a year.
Quebec's investment and innovation credit, known as C3i, remains in force and is not part of the CRIC consolidation. It pays 15% in high-vitality territories including Montreal, 20% in intermediate territories, and 25% in low-vitality territories, fully refundable regardless of company size for expenses incurred after 31 December 2023. It covers Class 53 manufacturing equipment, Class 50 computer hardware and systems software, and qualified management software packages, and includes the installation and implementation costs needed to make the asset work. Only costs above $12,500 per property count for equipment, or above $5,000 for hardware and software, and the cumulative ceiling is $100 million of eligible expenses over five years. It runs until the end of 2029.
These five credits are now law and they are refundable, which makes them real cash for companies that are not yet profitable. The Clean Technology credit pays 30% on solar, wind, and water generation, fixed-location electrical storage and pumped hydro, air-source and ground-source heat pumps, active solar heating, geothermal, concentrated solar, small nuclear, waste biomass energy, and non-road zero-emission vehicles with their charging and refuelling equipment. The property must be new, situated in Canada, and used exclusively in Canada. The rate falls to 15% in 2034 and ends after that.
The Clean Technology Manufacturing credit pays 30% on machinery and equipment used to manufacture clean technology or to extract and process critical minerals, including industrial robots, kilns, specialised tooling, and electric or hydrogen industrial vehicles. It runs at 30% through 2031 before stepping down, and the list of covered critical minerals was extended in late 2025 to include antimony, gallium, germanium, indium, and scandium.
IRAP is the most useful non-dilutive money for a small technical company, and the least transparent. The NRC does not publish a maximum contribution for ordinary domestic projects, and treat any advisor quoting a standard amount with suspicion. What the NRC does publish are the decision bands it works to, which tell you the real shape of the program: projects up to $50,000, from $50,000 to $500,000, from $500,000 to $3 million, and from $3 million to $10 million, with funding decisions in 20, 30, 45, and 65 business days respectively once a proposal is complete.
The process runs through people, not portals. You call the NRC, speak with a client engagement advisor, and are assigned an Industrial Technology Advisor who works through a diagnostic of your business and then, if there is a fit, develops a project proposal with you. In practice the relationship with that advisor is the application: proposals do not appear from nowhere, and costs incurred before the advisor engages are difficult to recover. Intake is continuous for domestic projects, while international collaborative calls have hard deadlines.
Apply earlier rather than later. IRAP contributions meet the Income Tax Act's definition of government assistance, so they reduce the SR&ED base for the costs they fund, project by project. The program's contribution budget is also scheduled to decline over the next several years, which makes timing a real consideration rather than a sales line.
The clusters are the largest pot of federal innovation money that most companies never look at, because there is no single federal form to fill in. Each cluster is an independent not-for-profit with its own industry-led board, its own membership terms and its own calls for projects. You join a cluster, you assemble a consortium, and the consortium applies. That structure is the reason the money is under-subscribed relative to its size, and it is also the reason it takes longer to reach than a tax credit.
The five clusters, with the federal envelope committed to each:
Cluster contributions are government assistance. They reduce qualified SR&ED expenditures dollar for dollar, on the same rule that applies to IRAP, and the reduction is tested on what you can reasonably expect to receive at the filing due date, not on when the cash lands. On a collaborative project this is harder than it sounds, because the consortium has to agree whose expenditures are whose before anybody claims. Two partners claiming the same work, or a partner claiming work that a contribution already funded, is the kind of thing a review finds. The full guide sets out how the clusters work and what a contribution costs a claim.
Membership terms differ by cluster. ISED states that each cluster has its own application process, and that some have associated fees or different membership levels, including free options. Calls open and close on each cluster's own schedule rather than a federal one, so the current position has to be confirmed cluster by cluster before a consortium commits to a timeline.
CanExport funds the cost of entering a market you are not already selling into, defined as one where you have under $100,000 in sales or under 10% of your total sales. Eligible costs fall into eight categories: travel to meet contacts or attend events, trade event participation, adapting marketing tools and materials, interpretation, contractual agreements and supplier certification, business, tax and legal consulting for the target market, market research and business-to-business facilitation, and intellectual property protection abroad.
You may target up to five markets in one application, and you must choose either the United States or non-United States stream, not both. The intake is annual rather than continuous, and processing runs 60 business days for non-United States applications and 90 for United States ones, which means the application has to be in well before the trade show you are planning to attend. The revenue and employee floors rose for 2026 to 2027, so a company that qualified two years ago at one employee and $100,000 of revenue may no longer qualify.
Check the stream before you plan. The United States allocation for the current intake has been exhausted and applications for it are no longer being accepted, and agri-food activity has moved to a separate agricultural marketing program. Program status changes through the year; we confirm the current position before you commit to an event.
This is the funding manufacturers most often overlook, because it is not a tax credit and it does not come from a funding agency. Hydro-Quebec's efficient solutions programs pay toward equipment and building measures, with support calculated by the utility's own measurement tool rather than published per-measure amounts. A small business on the general rate can receive up to 90% of eligible costs while funding at least 10% itself; medium and large customers fund at least 25%, or take a customized offer worth the lowest of 45 cents per kilowatt-hour saved, the amount producing a one-year payback, or 75% of eligible costs in an existing building. An energy analysis of the building itself is funded separately, up to $50,000, for sites using at least one gigawatt-hour a year.
For industrial sites on the large-power rate, the energy management system program is the substantial one: up to $50,000 for a diagnostic study, up to $350,000 each for implementing the management and information systems, up to $50,000 for measurement and verification over five years, plus a performance incentive of 20 cents per kilowatt-hour saved, and a certification bonus of $50,000 to $1 million that doubles if certification is achieved within 15 months. Demand response is different again: instead of funding equipment, it credits your winter bill for every kilowatt you can shed during peak events, on a sliding scale by the size of the reduction, with a flat credit if no peak event occurs.
Order matters here more than anywhere. Small-business equipment applications are submitted after installation, while customized offers for larger customers must be approved before the work begins. The province's own retrofit and electrification program for industry sits alongside these, paying up to 75% of eligible expenses to a ceiling of $5 million per application, and can be combined with utility support on different measures.
The Strategic Response Fund replaced the Strategic Innovation Fund and is not accepting applications under the old program. Its current streams are tariff response for steel, aluminium, and forest products, innovation in priority sectors including critical minerals, aerospace, clean technology, biomanufacturing and life sciences, and a challenge for domestic artificial intelligence compute capacity. Support is unconditionally repayable on a fixed schedule, conditionally repayable against metrics such as revenue, or a blend; non-repayable contributions are the exception rather than the norm.
This is not a program for a company with a $500,000 project. If your investment is at that scale, the regional agencies below are the right door.
Each region has a federal agency with its own programs. CED in Quebec funds business scale-up and productivity projects at up to 50% of authorized costs, repayable without interest, with repayment beginning two years after the project ends, and runs a tariff response initiative with non-repayable support up to $1 million for productivity and market diversification. FedDev Ontario funds southern Ontario businesses from $125,000 to $10 million, interest-free and unconditionally repayable, at up to 50% of eligible costs, for new labour, expertise, and equipment, and has a parallel tariff response stream with a non-repayable option. PacifiCan runs comparable programs in British Columbia, though its main scale-up stream opens and closes.
The federal student placement program is delivered through sector associations rather than by the government directly, so the association you apply through is the one that approves the placement and pays the subsidy. Biotechnology and natural health product employers apply through BioTalent Canada, software employers through ICTC or TECHNATION, environmental employers through ECO Canada, food processors through Food Processing Skills Canada, manufacturers through the Excellence in Manufacturing Consortium, and anything that does not fit cleanly through the multi-sector portal.
The mechanics decide whether the money arrives. At least 10 hours a week in every week of the placement, not on average. Four to 16 weeks. The student on your payroll with income tax, employment insurance, and pension deductions, because a student paid on invoices is not an eligible placement even at identical cost to you. The student enrolled at a Canadian post-secondary institution for the duration, and a citizen, permanent resident, or person with refugee protection; international students are not eligible.
No two federal wage subsidies on the same student. Research awards, other federal internship funding, and summer employment programs cannot overlap on the same wages in the same period, and undisclosed overlap is the most common reason an approved subsidy is clawed back. Ask the student directly before applying. The full briefing is here.
This is the cheapest access to specialised research capacity in the country. A graduate student works on your technical problem under academic supervision, with the intern receiving a minimum $10,000 stipend and up to about $5,000 of the award available for research expenses. Units stack, up to ten on a single project across as much as five years, so a serious research programme can be built from them. Intake is continuous, peer review takes six to eight weeks, and the project must start after the review concludes rather than before.
Settle intellectual property before you start. Mitacs takes no position on ownership; it is negotiated between you, the researcher, and the institution under that institution's rules. This is the term to read carefully, not the budget.
Where Mitacs places a person, Alliance funds a programme of university research on your problem. The cost share is a single ratio regardless of company size or sector, and in-kind contributions are required but do not count toward your cash share. Requests are grouped into small, medium and large tiers, with decisions in roughly five to nine weeks at the small end where existing peer review can be relied on, and up to 24 weeks at the large end. There is no deadline; applications are accepted continuously. A separate societal stream funds up to $500,000 a year at 100% of direct costs with no cash requirement, for work whose value is public rather than commercial.
Companies with fewer than two employees, venture capital firms, and holding companies are not eligible partners.
There is no longer a federal Canada Job Grant; the funding flows to provinces under workforce development agreements and each province designs its own employer grant. In Ontario, employers with 100 or more staff pay half the cost, smaller employers pay about one sixth, and training a previously unemployed new hire at a small employer can be fully funded. In British Columbia, applications are scored against provincial priorities, so the same training can be approved for one employer and returned to another. In Quebec, the higher rates apply when training is driven by new equipment or technology, by information technology, by the green economy, or by market diversification for manufacturers, and trainee wages are reimbursable up to $25 an hour.
Training you are legally required to provide does not qualify, and neither does vendor product training, conferences, or degree programmes. The training must be delivered by a third party and, in Ontario, completed within 52 weeks.
Programs stack, but they also interact, and the order they are applied for changes the total. The Grant Finder gives you a shortlist in four questions; a short meeting gives you a plan.
Find my programs Book a callProgram terms, rates, caps, and intake windows are set by the administering governments and change through the year; refundability and eligibility depend on each program's current rules and your corporate facts. This page is general information, not an eligibility determination.
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