Harper Government Strengthening Canada’s Science and Technology Advantage
During a speech today at the Creative Economy Summit, the Minister of State for Science and Technology, Gary Goodyear, announced that Canada will continue to make key investments in science and technology. “Through our government’s science and technology strategy, we are keeping our economy strong, creating high-quality jobs and ensuring Canada is a premier destination […]
Productivity is Innovation, Not Invention
On October 17, 2011, the federally appointed panel, chaired by Open Text chief strategy officer Tom Jenkins, released an assessment of the government’s $7-billion in annual investment in “business R&D”. The report recommended significant changes to the incentive programs and singled out the Scientific Research & Experimental Development (SR&ED) tax credit, the largest program, which […]
When does SR&ED start to happen?
A misconception often made with the SR&ED program is that a company can claim a full business project, instead of just the SR&ED activities that happen within the business project. The SR&ED program looks at activities where you have come across an obstacle, worked systematically to solve that obstacle, and somehow advanced your knowledge on […]
Toronto’s ICT Report
The City of Toronto recently released an ICT (Information and Communications Technology) Report, which takes a look at a number of items regarding investing in business in Toronto – including the state of Research and Development in Toronto. While the whole report is worth taking a look, the section on R&D is really what caught […]
R&D Review by Federal Government
There’s been a lot of talk in the past year about how Canada isn’t bringing R&D products to market as well as other countries. In February, it was announced that Canada got a ‘D’ for innovation, where we were listed as 14th among 19 other countries for commercialization of innovation. Then, there was another study […]
Higher Education R&D Spending
Today, StatsCan released results about spending on R&D in the higher education sector. In 2008/2009, spending went up 7.3% from the previous year to a total of $10.9 billion. About two-thirds of the R&D spending occurred in Ontario and Quebec, and most of the R&D that occurred got it’s funding from higher education institutes and/or […]
Fact or Fiction: We Already Get Funding from Another Program so Can’t Claim SR&ED!
A lot of times the funding that you get from other programs don’t cover the same areas of business as the SRED program covers. In the instances where you are getting a grant, loan or reimbursement for something R&D related you need to remember one thing: you cannot double dip for funding. Some examples are […]
SR&ED for Foreign-Owned Companies
There is no denying that Canada has one of the best programs as far as funding for companies that perform R&D goes. And while it is promoted frequently for Canadian Controlled Private Corporations, there are many other companies that can take advantage of this program. Take, for instance, an American-owned company that has a branch […]
Software: Who Can Claim for SR&ED?
So you’ve gotten your system running with a new piece of software – whether it’s to help run part of your machinery, or whether it’s to help run one of your processes more efficiently – and you want to include it in your SR&ED claim. Question is, is it eligible? That all depends on the […]
Canada gets D for innovation
The Conference Board of Canada issued a report on Tuesday on the state of Canada’s innovative abilities. Unfortunately, although we have the world’s best R&D funding program, we do not seem to rank very well on the global scale of taking the innovation we do and profiting from it. In fact, we ranked “14th among […]