I too have seen this as a past entrepreneur in Canada. A lot of accountants are in on misrepresenting SR&ED tax credit applications and will attempt to find the "research" in regular IT work. They will even do the technical writing and filing work for free, while taking a commission of the take when the tax credits roll in (free money). There is a whole segment of startups propped up by SR&ED. I've seen many doing innovative work with a sound business plan, using that money to get to profitability, and it's great they were able to get funding, but a lot of others milked the system fraudulently, using SR&ED consultants to continue to exist when they should have failed.