True scientific research and experimental development — figuring out how to extrude UHMWPE into fine fiber, inventing new materials, pushing manufacturing processes past known limits — is among the most noble work a country can fund. It deserves not just support but admiration.
When someone solves a genuine technological uncertainty — something no one on earth knew how to do before — that is worthy of worship. That is civilization advancing. Canada should be proud to incentivize it.
The vast majority of what gets claimed as SR&ED in Canada is not science. It is not research. It is not experimental development. It is lying on a government form to collect a check.
The SR&ED program has become a slush fund for software consultancies doing routine engineering — work that is no more scientifically uncertain than plumbing a toilet — and dressing it up in the language of “technological advancement.”
Anyone who still pretends that programming a CRUD app, standing up a database, or wiring together APIs constitutes scientific research is a charlatan. They should be made fun of, and if they're taking taxpayer money for it, they should face consequences.
There is a bright line between real R&D and normal engineering work. Building a factory that turns polyethylene powder into fiber nobody has made before — that's SR&ED. Writing software to manage inventory — that's a Tuesday.
The test is simple: did you face genuine scientific or technological uncertainty that couldn't be resolved by a competent practitioner using standard methods? If the answer is no, your claim is fraud. Full stop.
Protect the program by enforcing it ruthlessly. Every fraudulent claim devalues the real ones and poisons the well for companies doing genuine R&D on Canadian soil.
Canada's future depends on building things — factories, machines, materials, energy systems — not on subsidizing software shops to write code they would have written anyway.
The SR&ED program should be a source of national pride, not a national embarrassment. Clean it up, fund the real work, and lock up the liars.
The honest scientist — the one grinding away at a genuine unknown, the one who would never think to dress up their work in bureaucratic language to collect a tax credit — is the only person who actually deserves SR&ED funding. And they are the least likely to claim it.
The best researchers I've met don't even know what a T661 is. They're too busy actually doing the work. Meanwhile, every mediocre software consultancy in the country has a SR&ED advisor on speed dial.
The system is perfectly inverted: the liars claim millions, the real scientists get nothing. The people gaming the program are fluent in CRA language. The people advancing human knowledge can barely write a grant application.
I would fight a thousand governments for the honest scientist. Not because it's strategic. Not because it polls well. Because it is the right thing to do. These people are carrying civilization forward and we are failing them.
If protecting real science means burning down the cottage industry of fraudulent SR&ED consultants, so be it. If it means making enemies of every software shop that treats the program like free money, fine. The honest scientist is worth more than all of them combined.
Canada doesn't have a spending problem with SR&ED — it has an integrity problem. Direct every dollar toward the people actually confronting the unknown, and cut off everyone else without apology.