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Canada grants $10k per employee

The Canada-Ontario Job Grant (COJG) has been around since 2016 and provides $192 million annually in funding to increase the skill level of new or existing employees. COJG’s goal is to increase the skill level of Canada’s workforce and help Canadian companies become more globally competitive. Funding is very generous covering up to 84 per cent of the costs of training to a maximum of $10,000 per employee per year. While COJG does not cover routine or mandatory training such as Fall Arrest, Health and Safety Training or WHMIS, it does fund sales and customer training, management training, software training (i.e. ERP) and specialized industry software and vendor training.

Types of training covered

COJG covers:

• college or university courses;
• school board courses;
• union-based training courses;
• vendor product courses;
• fees by training providers; and
• mandatory student fees, textbooks, software and other required materials for all approved courses and examination fees.

Funding amount

The funding depends on the number of employees.

Companies with less than 100 employees

If your company has less than 100 T4 employees, COJG will cover 80 per cent of the training costs to a maximum of $10,000 per employee. For example, if a company spent $11,900 on training an employee, they would receive the maximum training grant amount of $10,000. Therefore, the employer would only be incurring $1,900 in expenses.

Companies with more than 100 employees

If your company has more that 100 T4 employees, COJG covers 50 per cent of the training costs to a maximum of $10,000 per employee. For example, if a company spent $20,000 on training an employee, they would receive the maximum training grant amount of $10,000 per employee.

Payment

Proof of payment needs to be provided to the government to receive reimbursement for training costs. It takes at least six weeks to receive your training COJG funding.

Application timeline

A grant is a limited amount of funding that must be approved before any expenditures are made. If you apply for COJG when training is in process, or after you complete the training, your company will be ineligible. You need to apply for COJG and get it approved before the training starts.

Once the COGJ funds are given out for the year, even if your company qualifies for the funding, you will not be able to get funding. For example, your company applies for funding for HR courses at a local college, which will be taking place in four months. While your company meets all the COJG criteria, you will not receive any funding if all COJG funds were given out for the government’s current fiscal year. You will need to wait until the next year.

COJG opens at the start of the government fiscal year, which is April 1 ^st and ends March 31^st of the following year. It is recommended you apply for all required training as soon as possible to ensure funding.

Application procedure

The COJG application can be found on the Ministry of Colleges, Universities and Training website.

Once the COJG application form is completed, you submit it online, and someone from the government will be in touch with you. The government representative will review the application and ask for any additional details they need. The approval decision on your COJG application will be made within a few weeks of your meeting with the government representative. Employers may apply for funding on an annual basis.  

Bonny Koabel, CPA, CGA, is president of AKR Consulting Canada, which specializes in government grants.