Maximizing Business Growth: Leveraging Canada’s 2024 Economic Trends & Grant Opportunities

What better way to start 2024 than with some trends in grant funding?

In the post-COVID world, Canadian businesses have experienced high inflation, labour shortages, cost increases, increased interest rates, and even COVID loan repayments. These headwinds have all impacted the bottom line across all provinces and sectors. The budget of the past three years has focused on supporting jobs, small business expansion, and growing the green economy. Though these priorities may continue, there likely won’t be any new major spending commitments due to pressures to rein in the fiscal deficit. The Federal Government will have a delicate balancing act tackling inflation while simultaneously side-stepping a recession and staying on track in balancing the budget. With the 2024 Federal Budget release around the corner, here is what you can expect.

Supporting Small Businesses: A Catalyst for Economic Growth

Many businesses are barely keeping afloat due to the inflationary pressures. Canada Emergency Business Account (CEBA) loan repayments have only exacerbated the issue.

• With this in mind, increasing business taxes should be a non-starter. Raising taxes would negatively impact the goal of raising productivity and living standards in the country. Instead, we may see large corporations and high-income individuals take on tax increases.
• Instead, we may see increased incentives for investment from the private sector and the Canadian Pension Plan for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMEs).

Green Economy: Accelerating Towards a Greener Future

The Government of Canada is committed to the net-zero goal. In this budget, you can expect to see additional investment in the clean economy. This may come in the form of grant funding, tax incentives or rebates. With our focus on grant funding, we anticipate some continual investment in:

• Innovation-driving grant programs such as Strategic Innovation Fund and Low Carbon Economy Fund 
• Hiring grants support job creation in this sector
• Capital cost grants to build renewable energy infrastructure
• Capital cost grants that build zero-emission vehicle infrastructure and grants that encourage industry to transition to electric vehicles or retrofit existing fleets to be more environmentally sustainable.
• You may also see financial commitment to spur growth in other related industries such as critical mineral mining and natural resources.

Housing

One of the key issues in Canada currently is housing affordability. The Federal Government plans on increasing the supply and accelerating the construction of housing. From the grant perspective, this may come in the form of:

• Additional hiring grants for trades, as we have seen an increase in the number of grants for skilled trades apprentices over the last few years.
• We are hopeful to see additional funding into grant programs such as GCWood, which expires this year. Programs like this would stimulate more green construction projects for tall and low-rise buildings.
• Lastly, rebates and incentives for green home retrofits can also be expected to continue.

Intellectual Property Protection

Innovation is the keystone that ensures Canada can remain competitive internationally. To protect Canada’s edge in the global stage, intellectual property protection will be top of priority.

• Since the 2021 Budget, the Federal Government has funded programs such as ElevateIP for businesses to plan, manage and leverage intellectual property.
• Intellectual Property typically goes hand-in-hand with export initiatives. We may see renewed funding commitments to assist SMEs in breaking into new international markets.
• The budget may also include a review of the SR&ED tax credit criteria.

New Comers to Canada

As Canada has taken in record numbers of immigrants the last couple of years, we have seen an increase number of invitations for immigrants in these 5 occupation categories: 1. Agriculture & agri-food, 2. transportation, 3. trades, 4. science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) and 5. healthcare

• To help these new Canadians integrate into the workforce, we anticipate new hiring grants and/or upskilling grants to bridge the gap to employment in these sectors.

Be a part of the Trend!

To align your business with these promising trends and secure essential funding, check out our Grant Calculator. This tool is specifically designed to connect your business with the most relevant grants for the fiscal year, tailored to your industry’s needs. Whether you are in clean energy or safeguarding intellectual property, the Grant Calculator is your gateway to identifying valuable grant opportunities.