CDAP is gone. Here’s what an Ontario SMB can actually apply for in 2026

We still get asked about CDAP on almost every intake call. So let’s clear it up once.

The Canada Digital Adoption Program is closed. Permanently. The Boost Your Business Technology stream stopped taking applications in February 2024, the program formally wound down on March 31, 2025, and as of mid-2026 the federal government has announced no successor. The $15K planning grant and the 0% BDC loan are gone. There is no waitlist. If a website or advisor tells you that you can still apply, their information is stale.

The only people with any remaining CDAP access are businesses that signed a grant agreement before the February 2024 cutoff and are still inside their deadlines. If that’s not you, stop searching for it.

So what replaced it?

Nothing replaced it one-for-one. What exists now is a different shape: fewer small grants, more loans and tax credits with higher ceilings. That changes how you should think, because a grant that funds the wrong project is a waste, but a loan that funds the wrong project is a liability you service for years.

Here’s the current map for an Ontario SMB, roughly in the order we’d check them:

1. BDC LIFT (federal). Launched April 2026, and it’s the closest thing to a CDAP spiritual successor for AI specifically: advisory support paired with financing from $25K up to $5M, with a preferential rate if you clear the bar. It’s a loan, not a grant, and the AI path has a revenue floor. We broke down exactly what it pays for and what unlocks the 2.25% rate in LOG_01.

2. OCI Digital Competence Centre (Ontario). The largest provincial digital funding path right now — a planning stage (DMAP, up to ~$15K) followed by an implementation stage (TDP, up to ~$150K). Notice the structure: plan first, then implementation money. Same logic CDAP used, and it’s the right logic.

3. AMIC — Advanced Manufacturing and Innovation Competitiveness (Ontario). If you’re a manufacturer, this is the big one, with streams from $500K (rural SME) up to $5M. Projects that show hard productivity metrics — units per hour, defect rates, energy use — score better. The current intake has a hard deadline of September 23, 2026. If this fits you, the clock is already running.

4. SR&ED (federal tax credit). Budget 2025 doubled the enhanced expenditure limit to $6M for CCPCs. But be honest about fit: buying or configuring off-the-shelf software does not qualify. Custom integration work with genuine technical uncertainty, novel algorithms, and AI model training can. If your project is “adopt a tool,” SR&ED is not your program.

5. NRC IRAP. Non-repayable contributions for projects with real technical risk. Same honesty test as SR&ED — adoption is not innovation. But the line is blurrier than owners think, and a project can sometimes be scoped so part of it genuinely qualifies.

6. FedDev Ontario / NOHFC. Regional programs, southern and northern Ontario respectively. Worth a check for larger productivity or scale-up projects.

One warning: verify status before you spend hours on any application. Programs pause without much notice — the Canada-Ontario Job Grant was paused in late 2025 for review. Program pages, not blog posts (including this one), are the source of truth.

The part that actually matters

CDAP’s best feature was never the money. It was the sequence: it forced you to fund a plan before it funded the technology. That discipline is worth keeping even though the program isn’t. Every option above works better — and the loan-heavy ones only make sense — when you’ve already identified the one workflow where AI changes your economics.

That’s the work we do in an audit, and it’s the same plan BDC wants to see before LIFT money moves. Figure out what’s worth funding first. Then pick the door.