AI Grants & Funding in Canada: The 2026 Programs

The grant everyone remembers is gone. The money is not.

CDAP closed its main grant to new applications, and most of the pages still explaining how to get it never mention that. What replaced it is bigger and harder to find: financing through a federal bank, adoption funding through six regional agencies, and no single place to apply. This is what is actually open in September 2026, who delivers it, and what you need before you approach any of them. We build the systems this money pays for. We are not grant writers and we do not file applications.

The funding page you found is probably two years out of date.

Search for AI funding in Canada and you will mostly find pages written for a program that stopped accepting applications, published by firms who have not revisited them since.

The Canada Digital Adoption Program's Boost Your Business Technology grant is fully subscribed and closed to new applications, and almost none of the pages describing it say so
What replaced it sits under a national strategy announced in June 2026 and is split across a federal bank, six regional development agencies, and several research institutes, with no single application
Intake dates vary by regional development agency, so a deadline you read on a national page may have nothing to do with yours
The programs fund AI adoption, and adoption is not a scope, so an application that says you want to use AI answers none of the questions being asked
The help available locally is usually a grant consultant who has never built the system, or a builder who has never read the program terms

What is actually open to a small or mid-size business.

Every figure below is attributed to the organization that delivers the program and was checked against its own page in September 2026. Programs change. Verify before you rely on any of it, including this page.

LIFT, through BDC. The Business Development Bank of Canada launched LIFT on 24 April 2026, short for Lead with Innovation and Focus on Technology, with $500 million earmarked for it. BDC describes loans from $25,000 to $5 million with flexible repayment, including postponing principal payments for up to two years, paired with advisory support to identify and validate the opportunity. Read the important word carefully: this is financing, not a grant. You pay it back.
The Regional Artificial Intelligence Initiative. Canada's national AI strategy commits $500 million to expand the Regional AI Initiative, delivered through the regional development agencies. For southern Ontario that agency is FedDev Ontario. It runs two streams: AI productization and commercialization for firms building AI, and adoption of AI applications across critical sectors for everyone else. The government states eligible recipients are those eligible under the Regional Economic Growth through Innovation program, which covers businesses, not-for-profits, Indigenous organizations, and governments. Intake dates vary by agency, so the only deadline that matters is the one on your agency's page.
What CDAP left behind, if you already hold an agreement. The Canada Digital Adoption Program launched in March 2022 and, on the government's own account, supported over 71,000 businesses and disbursed $1.2 billion. Its Boost Your Business Technology grant is now fully subscribed and closed to new applications. Approved, unexpired grant agreements remain valid, and BDC continues to accept loan applications from businesses that hold one. If you were approved before intake closed and never used it, check the agreement before you assume it lapsed.
The parts of the strategy that are not for you. AI for All, announced 4 June 2026, also carries a $700 million expansion of the Compute Access Fund, a $500 million Canadian Tech Growth Fund, and $130 million for commercialization through Mila, Amii, and the Vector Institute. Those are aimed at AI companies, research institutes, and scale-ups, not at a property manager, a brokerage, or a trades operator. They are named here so you can rule them out in one read instead of three calls.

Why most applications fail before anyone assesses them.

Every one of these programs funds a defined project. Wanting to use AI is not one.

Underneath the different forms, the programs ask the same four questions. What specifically are you doing. What does it cost. What changes when it works. Can you carry your share. An owner who answers that they want to use AI to become more efficient has answered none of them, and no amount of writing quality repairs that. The application was not rejected on style.

The answerable version sounds nothing like it. The tenant line goes unanswered after six. This many calls a month arrive outside business hours. Here is the system that answers them, here is what it costs to build and what it costs to run, here is what we measure at ninety days and what we would call a failure. That is a scope, and it is also, not by coincidence, the output of a proper audit.

We do that half. We do not write applications, we do not file on your behalf, and we will not tell you that you qualify, because eligibility is decided by the delivering organization against terms that move. What we can hand you is a scope, a fixed cost, and a measurement plan specific enough to put in front of a bank or an agency, and then build the thing if the money comes through.

One piece of context worth holding while you decide. Statistics Canada reported in June 2026 that 19.2 percent of Canadian businesses had used AI to produce goods or deliver services in the preceding twelve months, roughly triple the 6.1 percent it recorded two years earlier. The programs exist because that number is moving. They will not stay open at this size forever.

Who this page is for.

Owners who already have a quote. You know what the system costs and you are working out how to pay for it. Because LIFT is financing rather than a grant, your question is whether the payback beats the cost of borrowing, which is arithmetic we can do with you on a call.
Operators in the sectors the adoption stream names. The Regional AI Initiative's adoption stream is aimed at small and mid-size businesses in critical sectors. Property management, real estate, and the trades are not the headline examples in the program language, so read your agency's current terms rather than assuming you are in or out.
Anyone holding an unused CDAP agreement. If you were approved before intake closed and never drew on it, the government states approved unexpired agreements remain valid and BDC still accepts loan applications against them. That is the cheapest money on this page and the most commonly forgotten.

Questions, answered straight

Do you write grant applications? No. We are not grant consultants and we do not file on your behalf. We build and operate the systems the funding pays for. What we give you is the scope, the fixed cost, and the measurement plan, in the form an application asks for. Who writes the application is your call, and plenty of firms do only that.

Is CDAP still available? Its Boost Your Business Technology grant is fully subscribed and is not accepting new applications. If you already hold an approved, unexpired grant agreement, the government states it remains valid and BDC continues to accept loan applications against it. New applicants need to look at LIFT and the Regional AI Initiative instead.

Is LIFT a grant? No, it is financing. BDC describes loans from $25,000 to $5 million with flexible repayment, including postponing principal payments for up to two years, alongside advisory support. You pay it back, so the real question is whether the system pays for itself faster than the loan costs you.

Will you tell us whether we qualify? No, and treat anyone who does with suspicion. Eligibility is decided by the delivering organization against terms that change, and intake dates vary by regional development agency. Read the current program page or call the agency directly. We can tell you what your project is and what it costs, which is the part they will ask you for.

What about research funding like NRC IRAP? IRAP is named in the national strategy and funds research and development rather than adoption. If you are building something genuinely novel it is a different conversation and a different program. Most operators buying a voice agent or a workflow system are not doing R&D, and saying otherwise on an application does not help you.

What does the build itself cost? How we price is set out in what AI consulting actually costs, and we quote a fixed fee once scope is clear. The number we give you is a real number you can put in an application, not a range that moves after you have committed.

How current is this page? Every figure here comes from the delivering organization's own page and was checked in September 2026. Programs get fully subscribed, terms change, and intake dates move. Verify against the program page before you act on anything here, including this page. If you find something out of date, tell us and we will fix it.

The scope these programs ask for is what the AI audit produces, and our published rates are on AI consulting pricing. The practice as a whole is on AI consulting in Toronto, and the sector pages are property management, real estate, and the trades.