Highlights of Ontario innovation payments, FY2013

The Public Accounts of Ontario for fiscal year 2013 (ended March 31) were released last week, giving us our only detailed breakdown of the money spent by the government over the last year. Federal disclosures are more timely and thorough than provincial, with federal ministries and agencies required to disclose transfer payments of $25,000 or more every quarter. The cutoff for Ontario's public accounts is $120,000, so any payments by the provincial government below that amount aren't specified.

Some of the disclosed transfer payments to organizations supporting innovation (these are all from the Ministry of Research and Innovation—which was part of the Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation at the time—unless otherwise noted):

Ontario Centres Of Excellence (OCE)	$34,063,733
Ontario Capital Growth Corporation	$18,000,000
MaRS Discovery District	$17,584,660
Communitech	$10,441,690
MaRS Discovery District [MCYS]	$10,000,000
MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund	$8,375,000
Vineland Research & Innovation Centre [OMAFRA]	$3,666,460
htx.ca The Health Technology Exchange	$3,583,128
Coral CEA	$2,010,032
GreenCentre Canada	$1,592,563
Bioenterprise [OMAFRA]	$1,480,000
Network Of Angel Organizations Ontario	$611,914
Invest Ottawa	$581,715
Ontario Agri-Food Technologies [OMAFRA]	$553,500
Innovation Factory (Hamilton)	$473,721
VentureLab (York Region)	$469,853
NORCAT (Sudbury)	$426,825
Bloom Centre For Sustainability [OMAFRA]	$410,000
Bloom Centre For Sustainability	$351,065
Communitech [MTCU]	$329,838
Spark Centre (Durham/Northumberland)	$312,312
TechAlliance Of Southwestern Ontario (London)	$285,963
Innovation Guelph	$228,959
Launch Lab (Kingston)	$212,470
MaRS Discovery District [Energy]	$193,680
WEtech Alliance (Windsor)	$150,972
HalTech (Halton Region)	$141,227

Some of these dollars are passed through to other organizations, but that level of detail isn't provided. Many of these fundings were through the Ontario Network of Entrepreneurs (ONE) program, which was renewed for another three years this year.

Overall, the top recipients as shown in the public accounts for the research and commercialization sector were the Ontario Institute For Cancer Research ($89.8 million), and the University of Toronto ($39.0 million). OCE was third.