Our projects
When partnering with federal organizations, Impact Canada challenges can either be run through a “program stream”, where a portfolio of challenges is managed as a stand-alone program, or as “individual projects”, where funds are carved out of an existing program that did not originally intend to use challenge-based instruments.
View our challenge guideProgram streams
The Government of Canada created the Impact Canada Initiative in Budget 2017. The initiative introduces prizes, challenges, and other innovative policy and program approaches to help solve Canada’s biggest challenges. Through the Impact Canada Initiative, Natural Resources Canada is investing $75M over four years in a series of five clean technology challenges under the Cleantech Impact banner.
Challenge planning and execution can be resource intensive, particularly at the early phases of planning a challenge. Therefore, Impact Canada generally encourages program streams over individual challenges because they enable federal partners to take full advantage of the internal capacity developed through planning and launching a challenge to sustain innovative programming and potentially mainstream these approaches into their respective departments.
Cleantech impact
Natural Resources Canada launched the $75M clean technology stream to address persistent barriers in cleantech development and adoption, setting ambitious but achievable goals in order to identify and develop breakthrough solutions.
Food waste reduction
In Canada and around the world, food waste continues to increase, resulting in an overuse of our natural resources such as water, soil and land, while contributing excess greenhouse gas emissions to our atmosphere. Meanwhile, a growing number of Canadians are facing food insecurity. In response, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC), under the Food Policy for Canada, is launching the $20M Food Waste Reduction Challenge which includes four complementary innovation streams.
Housing supply
The Housing Supply Challenge invites citizens, stakeholders, and experts to propose solutions to the barriers to new housing supply. The challenge will distribute $300 million in funding over 5 years. There will be 6 rounds in the challenge. Each round awards proposals that address housing supply barriers such as building timelines, construction productivity, and improving data on land availability.
Individual projects
Individual projects are used when a federal partner wants to explore the use of a challenge as a program instrument in a more limited fashion, using funds carved out of an existing transfer payment program, where staff have existing priorities and responsibilities, aside from planning and implementing challenges.
An individual project is a good approach to tackle a specific objective, take advantage of a new opportunity not envisaged at the outset of a program’s design, or as a gateway to test the challenge approach prior to undertaking a program stream.
Interested?Submit an Expression of Interest.
Do you have a Challenge idea that you want to collaborate on? Submit an Expression of Interest. Your Expression of Interest Form will allow us to gain a preliminary understanding of what your initiative is trying to achieve and how we might work together under our Impact Canada mandate.
Submit an Expression of Interest guideOur team is able to provide a variety of support and services to bring value to your priorities organization. To learn more or explore working with us on Challenges, schedule a meeting by contacting Julie Greene, Lead, Capacity and Partnerships, at Julie.Greene@pco-bcp.gc.ca.