SR&ED and IRAP Funding Available to Assist Canadian Technology Startups

A recent PwC report found that Canadian start-up companies are looking more into building their business than into Mergers & Acquisition exits. Government funding provides significant assistance for Canadian technology start-ups, with 50% of start-ups surveyed applying for at least one source of funding, according to the report. Amongst these start-ups, 35% said they took […]

Canada’s Performance in Innovation

Ottawa based think tank, The Conference Board, released a series of reports called “How Canada Performs: A Report Card on Canada,” which assesses Canada’s quality of life in comparison to other countries. Canada receives grades of “B” in the majority of the sections, and received a grade of “A” in the Education and Skills section. […]

Bioniche Life Sciences Inc. Recieves IRAP Funding

Canadian business funding is moving from tax credits towards more direct funding of grants and loans. A popular grant program among SME’s is the IRAP program, which is Canada’s premier innovation assistance program that provides cost-shared financial assistance for research and development projects. The program connects each company with an Industrial Technology Advisor (ITA) who […]

Internship Funding Assists With Canadian Business Innovation

There exists a vast resource of bright young Canadian graduate students and researchers that companies have difficulties tapping into. Internship programs, such as Mitacs – Accelerate, provide a bridge for companies to gain access to these valuable resources to assist in the R&D needs of the company. On top of acquiring a highly educated graduate student […]

Improving Canada’s Fuel Economy Standards with the Automotive Innovation Fund

Environmentally-friendly vehicles have come a long way in terms of technological advancement and efficiency, but as with anything, there’s always room for improvement. The Automotive Innovation Fund (AIF) is a new program that aims to do just that by providing funding for vehicle and powertrain assembly operations associated with significant automotive innovation to support large-scale […]

R&D Spending On Upward Trend

StatCan recently released a report indicating the direction research and development (R&D) spending by businesses in the industrial sector has been going over the past several years. With anticipated spending of $15.5 billion in industrial R&D in 2012 (an increase of 0.9% from 2011), there is a positive outlook for R&D spending for the new […]

Summer SR&ED activities

In a recent article, Ross Cooper of Excellence in Manufacturing Consortium (EMC) discussed how the slow days of summer are ripe for SR&ED activities as companies are slowing or shutting down production and attending to pesky ongoing production, machinery and process issues as well as integrating improvements to increase efficiency for the rest of the […]

EVERY DROP COUNTS: Green Week Conference 2012 – Conserving water through innovation.

Water is essential for sustaining life, as well as our economy. With less than one percent of the world’s fresh water currently accessible for direct human use, water supplies are now a major global concern impacting not only our daily lives but also our business strategies. Throughout last week, thousands of individuals had gathered for […]

R&D incentive programs across the globe

In light of proposed changes to the SR&ED program announced in March’s federal budget, Canada retains a position as offering one of the most attractive R&D incentive programs globally. Let’s look at a few R&D tax credit programs across the globe to see how SR&ED stacks up. Currently, Canada’s SR&ED program offers a 35-percent refundable […]

The Automotive Innovation Fund

The Automotive Innovation Fund (AIF) was established in 2008 to support research and development projects to build more fuel-efficient vehicles.  Managed by Industry Canada, the AIF reviews proposals of more than $75 million over 5 years, including vehicle and powertrain assembly, large-scale automotive Innovation, and other R&D initiatives. For example, in 2009, AIF awarded$54.8 million […]