Industries
A program rarely turns a company down because it wasn't entitled to the money. It turns it down because the project went to the wrong window, or after the purchase was made. These pages start from the sector — not from the program — and say what to draw on, in what order, and when.
Overview
No single registry lists every grant and tax credit available to Canadian businesses: they are spread across the federal government, the provinces, municipalities, Crown corporations and dozens of sector bodies. What sets one sector apart from another is therefore not a number of programs, but what gets funded in it and what gets left behind. A company often belongs to two sectors — and that is an advantage, since each one opens its own windows.
| Sector | What gets funded | The sector's sticking point |
|---|---|---|
| Manufacturing | Automation, robotics, production equipment | Stackable funding for automation |
| Food processing | Production line, recipe, packaging, export | Coordinating the sector's programs |
| Construction | BIM, site digitization, prefabrication | Programs available to construction companies |
| Wood and forestry | Secondary processing, sawmill, engineered products | Calls for proposals with fixed deadlines |
| Transport and logistics | Automated warehouse, TMS and WMS, flow optimization | Funding comes through productivity |
| Agriculture | Precision agriculture, robotics, on-farm processing | Programs with regional availability |
On top of the above come the tax credits, which belong to no single sector: SR&ED and the CDAE AI credit apply to every sector and stack with grants on separate pools of expenses.
Sectors
Automation, robotics, process modernization: several forms of support stack on the same plant project, and most manufacturers claim just one of them.
MAPAQ, Investissement Québec and the federal government all overlap on this sector. Finding a program is easy; putting them in the right order is much less so.
Your funding exists, but it does not carry the word “construction”. It is filed under productivity, digital and innovative materials.
Some of the most generous envelopes in the country, but calls for proposals with short windows. Here, watching the dates is what decides.
Your support is filed under “productivity” and “digitization”, not under “transport”. It is a vocabulary problem, and an expensive one.
The most fragmented sector in the country: which measures are active varies from one region to the next. Knowing what is open where you are is half the work.
Your sector isn't on the list? The cross-sector programs — SR&ED, C3i, ESSOR, NRC IRAP, training measures — are not limited to any industry, and are built the same way. Our directory documents part of them; a thirty-minute call is still the fastest way to find out what applies to you.