Canada was already doing this for the games industry, though not at 80%. It worked. Look at all the studios in Montreal. Perhaps it could work again for the startup culture. It's cold enough up there in the winter that going outside is horrible, so why not stay inside and code!
The article is really light on details, but I'm pretty sure it's not describing anything new. It's just SR&ED (lovingly called shred colloquially) and related provincial programs, which have been around for a long time (in their modern form since at least 1994). In fact, it's probably fair to say that almost every tech employee (and many non-tech employees) in Canada has been under an SR&ED grant whether they knew it or not.
There's actually quite a bit of overhead in reporting on how your work qualifies as research, and it's gotten more strict in recent years. Apparently there have been cases in the past of things like restaurants claiming their chefs were doing research and such.
I believe the company also needs to be majority owned by resident Canadian citizens. There are a number of accounting firms that specialize in SRED claims, but most take a cut of your return in exchange for their services.
The requirements are quite specific. As a designer I didn't qualify for shred when I got here, but programmer colleagues (with an appropriate degree) did.
The requirements are, but enforcement isn't always particularly strong. There's a LOT of companies using SR&ED and relatively not a lot of bureaucrats checking up on it. It's extremely valuable to a company, so some will go to some pretty ridiculous lengths to get it.
Actually it's the province of Quebec and it is a tax credit for video game studios. The incentive was put in place around 1998-1999 and it is said to have been paying itself since 2005 or so from the influx of high paying job in the industry.
And winter isn't that bad, we only get -30C for a week or two in January!
