Few days ago the Federal government presented its 2024 fiscal year budget. We went through 430 pages to summarize what matters the most for your business. We are happy to share the following key business funding programs updates.
The following New Grants will be open as soon as the government finalizes guidelines:
- AI Compute Access Fund to help Canadian researchers, start-ups, and scale-up businesses access the computational power they need to compete and help catalyze the development of Canadian-owned and located AI infrastructure
- NRC IRAP AI Assist Program to help small and medium-sized businesses scale up and increase productivity by building and deploying new AI solutions. This will help companies incorporate AI into their businesses and take on research, product development, testing, and validation work for new AI-based solutions.
- Funding to boost AI start-ups to bring new technologies to market, and accelerate AI adoption in critical sectors, such as agriculture, clean technology, health care, and manufacturing. This support will be delivered through Canada’s Regional Development Agencies.
These New Tax Credits will be available later in 2024:
- Clean Electricity Tax Credit retroactive to March 28, 2023. This is a 15% refundable tax credit rate for eligible investments in new equipment or refurbishments related to:
- Low-emitting electricity generation systems using energy from wind, solar, water, geothermal, waste biomass, nuclear, or natural gas with carbon capture and storage.
- Stationary electricity storage systems that do not use fossil fuels in operation, such as batteries and pumped hydroelectric storage.
- Transmission of electricity between provinces and territories.
- Clean Hydrogen Tax Credit retroactive to March 28, 2023
- Clean Technology Adoption Tax Credit retroactive to March 28, 2023
- Clean Technology Manufacturing Tax Credit retroactive to January 1, 2024
- Carbon Capture, Utilization & Storage Tax Credit retroactive to January 1, 2022
- Electric Vehicle Supply Chain Investment Tax Credit on the cost of buildings used in key segments of the electric vehicle supply chain, for businesses that invest in Canada across three supply chain segments: electric vehicle assembly; electric vehicle battery production; and, cathode active material production.
The funding is confirmed for the following existing programs:
- Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership
- Canada’s Global Innovation Clusters
- Strategic Innovation Fund
- Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC)
- Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)
- Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)
- Scientific Research & Experimental Development Tax Credit (SR&ED)
- Clean Fuels Fund
- Low Carbon Economy Fund
- Canada Growth Fund
These existing funding programs will be boosted:
Stay tuned to our newsletter as we will be sending updates as they become available.
Aside from the above, the budget is full of measures to support housing construction and affordability, defense, security, Indigenous funding, new tax measures and much more.