Eligibility
Who qualifies for CSBFP.
The program's eligibility rules are codified in the Canada Small Business Financing Act and Regulations. They're reasonably simple, and most Canadian small businesses qualify.
A quick check
Likely a fit
- For-profit business carried on in Canada, with a place of business and assets in Canada.
- Gross annual revenue of $10 million or less (fiscal year of loan approval for existing businesses; first 52 weeks for new businesses).
- Offering products or services to the public: retail, wholesale, or service.
- Not-for-profit, charitable, or religious organization that carries on a business (eligible since June 2021).
- Sole proprietor, partnership, corporation, or cooperative.
- Canadian citizen, permanent resident, or foreign owner. The program itself has no citizenship restriction.
Not a fit
- Farming business, served by the Canadian Agricultural Loans Act (CALA) program instead.
- Business owned by a related borrower whose combined CSBFP loans would exceed program limits.
- Business with no operations and no customers (the program funds operating businesses, not passive holdings).
The $10 million ceiling, in practice
Most Canadian small businesses fall comfortably under $10 million in gross annual revenue. The ceiling is set high enough to capture the vast majority of SMBs, so it's rarely the binding constraint. For fast-growing businesses that expect to cross the threshold soon, the test is applied to the fiscal year of loan approval, not a later year, so growing past the line after the loan is in place doesn't retroactively disqualify you.
Farming and agriculture-adjacent businesses
Farms are explicitly excluded from CSBFP because Ottawa operates a separate program (CALA) specifically for agricultural lending. Service businesses that are incidentalto agriculture, for example, custom harvesting, equipment repair for farm equipment, or agronomy services, generally remain eligible under CSBFP, because the business itself isn't a farming operation.
Not-for-profits, charities, and religious organizations
The program was expanded in June 2021 to include not-for-profit, charitable, and religious organizations that carry on a business.The test is whether the organization offers products or services to the public, not whether it's organized as an NPO or charity. A cultural centre running a revenue-generating event venue, a charity operating a thrift store, or a religious organization running a daycare, all plausibly eligible on the program side. The lender's underwriting is a separate question.
Borrower structure
Sole proprietors, partnerships, corporations, and cooperatives are all eligible borrower types. The program doesn't prefer one structure over another; what matters is that the entity is carrying on a business in Canada.
Citizenship and residency of principals
The CSBFP program itself imposes no citizenship restriction on the principals of the business. Canadian citizens, permanent residents, and foreign owners are all eligible under the program's rules. Individual lenders may apply their own due diligence (some require principals to be in Canada or have Canadian credit history), but those are lender choices, not program rules.
Qualifying for the program is not the same as getting funded
Meeting the program's eligibility criteria admits you to the playing field. Whether a specific lender approves you is a separate question, one answered by their own underwriting, your business's financial strength, and how well your file is prepared. Most applications that fail do so at lender review, not at program eligibility.
That's the gap Capital Toolkit is built to close: understanding the program clearly, and then preparing a file the lender can actually fund.