Question Period Note: ElevateIP

How will ElevateIP foster the competitiveness and growth of innovative start-ups in Canada?

• Working with Canada’s business accelerators and incubators and their ecosystems, the five recipients of ElevateIP provide Canadian start-ups across the country with the tools they need to better protect, strategically manage, and leverage their intellectual property.
• Businesses that are able to leverage their intellectual property strategically are more likely to be innovative, expand, and experience high growth.
• Through the new $90 million ElevateIP initiative, the Government of Canada supports Canadian start-ups in making better strategic use of their intellectual property.

Budget 2021 announced the launch of ElevateIP, with a $90 million investment over four years to help business accelerators and incubators (BAIs) and BAI networks provide start-ups with access to professional intellectual property (IP) services. A call for proposals was open from April 26, 2022, to June 28, 2022. Strong proposals to the program demonstrated significant collaboration, broad geographic coverage, and sustainability following the end of the program’s mandate.
Over its four-year life, the program aims to achieve the following key objectives:
• Facilitate IP supports by BAIs to start-ups at key junctures in the entrepreneurial process to enable the rapid scaling, growth and sustainability of start-ups in Canada;
• Help increase the IP capacity of the BAI ecosystem in Canada by enabling IP education for BAIs and their start-up members, facilitating the exchange of best practices, encouraging collaboration, and providing greater access to IP advice and support as an integrated component of general business supports offered by BAIs; and,
• Enable BAIs to provide targeted supports, supports that are customized to the unique requirements of each start-up, to help start-ups secure and maintain IP rights, while enabling longer-term IP benefits to be delivered through the BAI ecosystem.
The competitive process to select recipients was based on a number of criteria, including past experience, strength of plans to provide IP support, financial capability, sustainability past the four year mandate of the program, and their ability to address gaps in existing service offerings (including planned activities that actively target underrepresented groups).
Following this thorough assessment, five Recipients were selected and announced in December 2022. Funding was allocated across the Recipients based on a number of factors, including distribution of populations to be served and strength of project plans, with the aim of ensuring broad geographic coverage across the country. The five Recipients and their funding allocations are as follows:
• Springboard Atlantic Inc. – $7.4 million to support start-ups in Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island
• Mouvement des accélérateurs d’innovation du Québec (MAIN) – $17.45 million to support start-ups in Québec
• Communitech Corporation – $38.8 million to support start-ups in Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan
• University of Calgary with Innovate Calgary & Lethbridge Economic Development – $9.9 million to support start-ups in Alberta
• New Ventures BC Society – $12.5 million to support start-ups in British Columbia, Yukon, Nunavut and the Northwest Territories
Program staff continue to collaborate with Recipients to ensure strong governance structures are in place to manage program funds and track progress against key performance indicators.

• As a national program, there is also considerable focus on fostering strong collaborative networks at the national level. Program Recipients will work with each other and other key players across their respective ecosystems to ensure that start-ups have access to tailored IP supports, regardless of where they are located in Canada.

• As of December, most recipients have launched their respective projects offering services to Canadian start-ups.