This blog was submitted by Boast AI.
Calgary has spent the last few years earning a reputation as one of Canada’s fastest-growing tech hubs, boasting 61,000 tech workers, a maturing startup ecosystem, and a steady migration of talent and capital into the city. This year, just as Calgary’s tech ecosystem reaches new heights, the federal government has unlocked significant new opportunities to help fund even greater innovation.
On March 26, 2026, Bill C-15 (the Budget Implementation Act, 2025, No. 1) received Royal Assent, bringing with it the most substantial changes to Canada’s Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED) program in over a decade. For Calgary’s tech founders, CTOs, and CFOs, these SR&ED enhancements translate directly into more non-dilutive capital to fund the work you’re already doing.
What Is SR&ED, and Why Does It Matter for Calgary Businesses?
SR&ED is Canada’s primary federal mechanism for incentivizing private sector R&D. Through a combination of tax credits and refunds, it returns a portion of qualifying R&D expenditures to Canadian companies with no equity dilution, no repayment, and no application lottery. For Canadian-controlled private corporations (CCPCs), the enhanced credit rate is 35%, refundable, while the base rate is 15% for larger corporations.
Any company that’s developing or improving products, processes, or software (and encounters genuine technical uncertainty along the way) likely has qualifying SR&ED work. That covers a wide range of Calgary industries, from SaaS and Energy Tech to advanced manufacturing, health tech, and AI.
What Changed With Bill C-15?
Three changes in particular stand out for Calgary companies.
The expenditure limit doubled. Previously, CCPCs could access the enhanced 35% refundable credit on up to $3 million in qualifying annual expenditures, generating a maximum of $1.05 million in refundable credits. That cap has now been raised to $6 million in eligible expenditures, with a corresponding increase in maximum refundable credits to $2.1 million per year. This is a substantial, material difference for companies with significant R&D programs.
Capital expenditures are back. Equipment, machinery, and certain lease costs used primarily for SR&ED work are once again eligible for the credit, marking the re-entry of a category that was stripped from the SR&ED program in 2014. For Calgary companies doing any kind of hardware-intensive development, field trials, or pilot projects, this is a meaningful new category of recoverable costs.
Eligible Canadian public corporations can now access the enhanced credit. Historically, the 35% refundable rate was available only to CCPCs. That’s changed. Publicly traded Canadian companies can now access the enhanced credit, opening the program to a broader range of innovators at different growth stages.
The changes apply to tax years beginning on or after December 16, 2024.
The Alberta Angle: Stacking SR&ED With the IEG
Here’s where the opportunity for Calgary businesses gets particularly interesting. Alberta’s Innovation Employment Grant (IEG) is a provincial program that layers on top of federal SR&ED, and it’s now permanent.
The IEG provides an 8% credit on qualifying R&D at or below a company’s two-year rolling average, and a 20% credit on incremental R&D spending above that average. It’s available to corporations carrying out SR&ED-eligible work in Alberta, capped on up to $4 million in annual eligible expenditures. For a growing CCPC with rising R&D investment, the combination of federal SR&ED and the IEG can yield a combined recovery rate that’s among the highest available anywhere in Canada.
For Calgary’s Energy Tech and Hard Tech Companies, Capital Is the Key Word
The restoration of capital expenditure eligibility deserves particular attention from Calgary’s industrial innovators. Prior to 2014, equipment and machinery used for SR&ED could be included in a claim. That eligibility was eliminated in a round of program reforms, and for capital-intensive companies (those running field trials, building prototype hardware, or operating pilot facilities) it represented a significant reduction in recoverable costs.
Now that Bill C-15 reverses that, equipment, machinery, and certain lease costs that are used all (or substantially all) of their operating time in the performance of SR&ED in Canada are once again eligible. For Calgary’s energy tech sector in particular, where development work often involves physical infrastructure and real operational costs rather than just labour and software, this change can materially expand the size of a qualifying claim. The same applies to advanced manufacturing, cleantech hardware, and any company whose R&D involves more than code.
The Bottom Line for Calgary Founders and Finance Teams
The 2026 SR&ED Enhancements don’t require you to do anything differently from an innovation standpoint. The work you’re already doing (ie. building new software, improving processes, tackling engineering problems) likely qualifies. The big change is simply how much you can recover for it.
If your team hasn’t revisited your SR&ED strategy in light of Bill C-15, now is the time. The doubling of expenditure caps, the return of capital eligibility, and the permanent IEG create a stacking opportunity that Calgary’s most innovative companies can’t afford to overlook.
Boast is a North American R&D tax credit solution that has helped more than 2,000 companies across Canada and the United States access over $900 million in SR&ED and innovation funding since 2011.
To learn how the 2026 enhancements might apply to your business, visit boast.ai.
