[waterside81]

It's great getting that money back and the author makes some good points about the shortcomings of the program, but as a recipient of this credit 3 years in a row now (just got our 2015 claim approved in record time), here's my issue with it: It just seems like a handout for optics' sake.

In my circle of fellow SR&ED recipients, none of us have ever said "Well if it wasn't for this program, we wouldn't have hired these people, built that, researched this etc."

Although in spirit it's meant to act as incentive to take risk, profit is all the motivation you need. I can't help but think that $4B could have been better spent on a few km of track for the subway in Toronto, for example.

[peeters]

Isn't the goal to keep the R&D in Canada? It might make no difference to how a startup is run, but I could see it making a difference of where the startup is run.

[tjl]

I worked at a small startup (3 founders plus me) and the only reason I was hired was because of a Mitacs grant (the company puts up half and Mitacs puts up the other half) and SR&ED. I researched a number of topics related to NLP. I'm not working there any more because they had funding issues and couldn't pay for another half of a (longer) Mitacs grant.

[wwhchung]

Yup. I chose to write about something I could put figures to rather than something that's much more subjective and I don't really have a good alternative for with data to back it up. I 100% agree though.