On January 27, 2009 federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty delivered Budget 2009, entitled “Canada’s Economic Action Plan.” According to the Minister, the budget is “based on three guiding principles—that stimulus should be timely, targeted and temporary.” As expected, the budget emphasized infrastructure spending, and investments in training and skills initiatives. It also provided several measures targeted at small and medium-sized enterprise. Below are some highlights of potential interest to the Waterloo Region tech community.

Financial and tax measures

• $13 billion in additional financing through financial Crown corporations: the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, Export Development Canada, and the Business Development Bank of Canada. This includes $5 billion in new financing to be delivered through enhanced cooperation between these financial Crown corporations and private sector financial institutions under the new Business Credit Availability Program.
• Increasing the maximum eligible loan amount a small business can access under the Canada Small Business Financing Program
• Establishing a single Canadian securities regulator
• Commitment to developing options to provide self-employed Canadians with access to EI maternity and parental benefits
• Introducing a temporary 100-per-cent capital cost allowance (CCA) rate for computers acquired after January 27, 2009 and before February 1, 2011
• Extending the temporary 50-per-cent straight-line accelerated CCA rate to investment in manufacturing or processing machinery and equipment undertaken in 2010 and 2011
• Permanently eliminating tariffs on a range of machinery and equipment.

Small business measures

• Allocating $200 million over two years to the National Research Council’s Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP) to enable it to temporarily expand its initiatives for small and medium-sized businesses
• Increasing the amount of small business income eligible for the reduced federal tax rate of 11 per cent to $500,000 from the current limit of $400,000 as of January 1, 2009
• Increasing access to credit for small businesses through proposed amendments to the Canada Small Business Financing Program and the Business Development Bank of Canada
• Providing $30 million over two years for the Canada Business Network and $10 million to the Canadian Youth Business Foundation.

Higher education, skills and training measures

• Providing $28.6 million over the next two years to the Canada New Media Fund, and $14.3 million annually thereafter. Also providing the Canadian Television Fund with $200 million in funding over the next two years
• A new Clean Energy Fund for clean energy research development and demonstration projects, including carbon capture and storage
• Providing more than $1 billion over five years for a Southern Ontario development agency to help workers, communities and businesses in this region

For the full text of the budget speech, click here.