Springboard response to Federal Budget 2025: Strengthening Canada’s Innovation, IP,and Research Advantage
From Daryl Genge, President and CEO, Springboard Atlantic
Budget 2025 strengthens Canada’s knowledge economy by linking intellectual property, research, and commercialization more tightly than ever before.
Through renewed investments in ElevateIP, IP Assist, and IAC alongside the attraction of more research talent and the modernization of SR&ED, the expansion of AI and quantum capacity, and a Defence Industrial Strategy focused on dual-use technologies, the Government of Canada is clearly signalling that IP is vital to our economic growth.
“These measures recognize the critical role that universities and colleges play in advancing Canada’s innovation advantage. Our post-secondary institutions ignite research commercialization, producing discoveries that can underpin Canada’s competitiveness in AI, clean technology, life sciences, and emerging defence applications.”
– Daryl Genge, President and CEO of Springboard Atlantic
Building continuum from research to resilience in Canadian economy
By better linking federal R&D incentives with IP strategy, commercialization funding, and sovereign compute investments, Budget 2025 creates a continuum from research to resilience, ensuring that Canadian ideas are developed, deployed, and owned here at home.
This budget marks progress toward a more intentional innovation architecture: one that empowers our researchers, protects our IP, and secures Canada’s role in the global innovation economy.
Budget highlights on IP
- $84.4 million over four years, starting in 2026-27, to Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada to extend the Elevate IP program,
- $22.5 million over three years, starting in 2026-27, to renew support for the Innovation Asset Collective’s Patent Collective.
- $75 million over three years, starting in 2026-27, to the National Research Council to extend the IP Assist Program.
- An intellectual property performance review to identify new ways to partner with emerging and scaling intellectual property-intensive firms, increase domestic investment in leading and high-potential firms, retain and commercialise intellectual property in Canada, and help firms to protect and commercialise their intellectual property in foreign markets to advance trade diversification.
- Improving legal certainty and transparency in the intellectual property system to help facilitate more intellectual property backed lending and limit abusive behaviour.
- $925.6 million over five years to build a large-scale sovereign compute capacity, providing AI infrastructure to further support sovereign AI capacity in Canada and ensure a successful Canadian AI ecosystem.
Springboard Atlantic is a Network of 19 post-secondary universities and colleges in Atlantic Canada. Our mission is to grow the regional economy by commercializing research and by connecting industry with research to solve real-world problems.