Find out how Ontario's environment of innovation helps Cisco Canada grow.

If your business is driven to innovate, then Ontario is the place to take your ideas from the drawing board to the market. We are the birthplace of insulin, the Canadarm that repairs space shuttles, and the IMAX movie screen and 3D system. Our long history of innovation includes life-changing discoveries such as the first external pacemaker, stem cells and the T-cell receptor.

Almost half of Canada’s full-time R&D personnel are in Ontario, where more than $13.9 billion in R&D is performed each year by businesses, universities and colleges, private non-profit organizations, governments, and foreign firms. For your business, these statistics translate into exciting opportunities for developing breakthrough concepts and technologies and bringing them to markets in North America and beyond. Listen to what four leading Ontario nanotech researchers have to say about doing R&D in Ontario.

Learn more about innovation in Ontario:

• Our Investments in Innovation
• Ontario R&D Tax Program
• Ontario Network of Excellence (ONE)
• Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE)
• Who’s Doing R&D in Ontario
• R&D Resource Library

Our Investments in Innovation

In 2009, Ontario announced $715 million in investments over the next five years to help the brightest researchers move their new ideas from labs to the global marketplace. These investments included:

• $300 million for research infrastructure, which will be available to leverage funding from the federal Canada Foundation for Innovation
• $250 million over five years for a new Emerging Technologies Fund that will focus on clean technologies, health and life sciences, and information and communication technologies, including digital media
• $50 million to enhance the Innovation Demonstration Fund
• $10 million to the Colleges Ontario Network for Industry Innovation to assist small and medium-sized enterprises with hands-on applied research, technology transfer and commercialization
• $5 million to support the Ontario Genomics Institute

Ontario’s R&D Tax Program

More than $13.9 billion in industrial and university-based R&D is performed in Ontario every year. We make innovation affordable for Ontario-based businesses through our R&D tax incentive program, which is available to qualified businesses of any size and applies to a range of eligible costs that is broader than in the U.S. and many other countries. There is no cap on the program and tax credits can be carried back for three years or forward for 20.

Combined with federal R&D programs, Ontario’s R&D Tax Program can reduce the after-tax cost of every $100 in R&D spending to about $56, or $38 for small businesses. It’s not surprising that KPMG put Canada ahead of other major industrialized countries when comparing R&D costs against the U.S., citing a Canadian cost advantage of close to 13 per cent.

Learn More About Ontario’s R&D Tax Program

View the following tables, which summarize companies’ research expenditures and after-tax R&D costs in 2011:

• Large Manufacturers 
• Small and Medium-Sized Manufacturers 
• Large Non-Manufacturers 
• Small and Medium-Sized Non-Manufacturers 
• Small Canadian-Controlled Private Corporations
  

Visit these websites for more details about the R&D Tax Program:

• Scientific Research and Experimental Development Tax Credit
• Ontario Business-Research Institute Tax Credit
• Ontario Research and Development Tax Credit
• Ontario Innovation Tax Credit for R&D

Ontario Network of Excellence (ONE)

To help Ontario’s innovators take their bright ideas from concept to market, we created the Ontario Network of Excellence, or ONE for short. Through ONE, researchers and entrepreneurs who are commercializing new approaches and technologies get access to comprehensive support programs and services. Whether your business is large or small, domestic or multi-national, your R&D activities could qualify you for support through ONE.

Learn more about the Ontario Network of Excellence.

Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE)

Ontario Centres of Excellence is an R&D matchmaker that connects companies with top researchers to develop breakthrough products for world markets in communications and information technology, earth and environmental technologies, energy, materials and manufacturing, and photonics.

OCE also manages the following programs:

• Centre for Commercialization of Research, dedicated to improving the commercialization of innovative technologies
• Investment Accelerator Fund, a seed fund that assists emerging Ontario technology companies to bring their products and services to market
• Industry-Academic Collaboration Program, an Ontario Network of Excellence program that brings together researchers from industry and post-secondary schools, helps develop business skills, and supports technology and knowledge transfer

Learn more about the Ontario Centres of Excellence.

Who’s Doing R&D in Ontario

Ontario’s innovators are medical scientists, academic researchers, industrial engineers and small business owners. They’re policy analysts, software developers and physicists. Our vast and diverse pool of R&D personnel yields the most amazing discoveries year after year.

Here’s where you’ll find Ontario’s innovators:

Companies

About 45 per cent of Canada’s top 100 corporate R&D spenders are in Ontario, accounting for combined R&D spending of $5.4 billion in Fiscal 2010 – or 57% of total R&D spending – of this group’s research expenditures.

The diverse roster of top R&D spenders in Ontario includes companies like Research In Motion, Linamar, Bioniche Life Sciences, Bridgewater Systems, Honeywell Canada, DragonWave, and Xerox Canada.

Universities and colleges

Ontario has 18 internationally recognized research universities, including the universities of Toronto, McMaster, Western, Queen's, Ottawa, Guelph and Waterloo. We also have 24 colleges of applied arts and technology, where students and faculty frequently work with industry on applied research projects.

R&D Facilities

Ontario is also home to many publicly funded and not-for-profit research organizations. The best way to discover what's new with R&D here is to visit the websites of leading organizations.