Amount: up to 75% of eligible costs to a maximum of $5 million.

The Ontario Together Trade Fund (OTTF) provides financial support to help businesses with near-term investments so they can serve more interprovincial customers, develop new markets, and re-shore critical supply chains in the face of U.S. tariffs.

Projects must address the impacts of U.S. trade disruptions and align with Ontario’s key economic priorities, including:

Trade diversity:

  • Diversifying sales portfolios: Expanding market reach to new markets, with a focus on interprovincial trade.

Trade security:

  • Enhancing competitiveness: Increasing manufacturing capacity and capabilities and increasing profitability through investments in advanced technology and innovative processes.
  • Contributing to regional and sectoral ecosystems: Strengthening Ontario’s supply chains through reshoring and efforts to procure more equipment and supplies from Ontario and Canada.
  • Creating and or retaining jobs

The types of support available include funding and complementary supports and services.

Eligibility requirements

To be eligible, businesses need to:

  • operate within Ontario
  • have at least 3 years of operations/financial statements (refer to Operating Experience section in program guidelines to determine financial statement requirements)
  • employ at least 5 full time equivalent (FTE’s) active employees
  • demonstrate the following due to the imposition of U.S. tariffs:
    • operates in a sector extensively targeted by U.S. tariffs (for example, steel sector, auto sector, aluminum)
    • significant exposure to trade risk (for example, revenue loss of 30% or higher), or pivoting operations to supply a customer that is looking to replace a current supplier due to tariffs

To be eligible, it is also essential for businesses to:

  • make an investment to:
    • enhance domestic competitiveness
    • build capacity and local supply chain in Ontario, including reshoring/replacing U.S. based suppliers
    • pivot operations to manufacture less trade exposed goods
    • create and/or secure jobs in Ontario
    • other activities required to diversify revenue streams
  • invest at least $200,000 in eligible project costs
  • complete the project within 2 years

Eligible activities

OTTF offers conditional funding to support eligible project activities, including:

  • business development, such as market diversification and sales expansion
  • increasing capacity and creating and securing jobs in Ontario
  • procurement of advanced equipment and facility modification to enhance domestic manufacturing, support reshoring and growing Ontario’s supply chain
  • development of innovative technologies to boost the competitiveness of Ontario’s production and manufacturing capacity
  • localization for new markets (for example, certification, legal, labelling, testing costs)
  • modification of existing products to enter new sectors (for example, pivoting production from automotive fasteners to construction fasteners)
  • increasing the resiliency of Ontario’s economy in response to trade related challenges, such as purchasing equipment and materials from local suppliers or shifting sales to non-U.S. markets

Amount

Funding will be provided through a grant or loan up to 75% of eligible costs to a maximum of $5 million.

Timeline

The application intake period will be open on April 23, 2025.

The intake period is continuous which means applicants can submit their application any time while the program is open.