Largest lifetime grant recipient · 2020-2021
$436.6M
TECHNOLOGYINNOVATION&EMISSIONSREDTNFUND
ENVIRONMENT AND PARKS · TIER GRANTS
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Zombie Recipients
A “zombie recipient” is an organization that keeps receiving public funds despite signs of inactivity. We can show ongoing payments to recipients that look dormant by grant history, but Alberta doesn’t publish bulk corporate registry data, so dissolved status can’t be confirmed.
- What this page shows now
- Continuity of funding by recipient over time, dormancy proxies based on grant cadence, and a structured "What's Missing" block naming the four registries that would close the loop.
- What is missing to prove more
- Bulk Alberta Corporate Registry (status, filings, address), public-sector body operating-status data, and a stable recipient ID that survives renames and reorganisations.
- Why it matters
- "Zombie" recipients — paid despite being dissolved or inactive — are the canonical accountability failure the open data ought to catch. The federal record handles charities cleanly; Alberta corporate status is the missing piece.
I
Headline signals
The largest grant award in the current Alberta fiscal year and over the full disclosed history.
II
Top recipients · all-time grants
Top 100 non-public-sector recipients by lifetime total (grants + contracts) · data current as of 2026-04-26. Click a name for a summary modal; the modal links to the full per-recipient page.
| 2025-2026 | $0 | $1.23B | ||
| 2025-2026 | $0 | $1.13B | ||
| 2015-2016 | $0 | $635.05M | ||
| 2025-2026 | $0 | $578.46M | ||
| 2023-2024 | $0 | $467.58M | ||
| 2025-2026 | $0 | $440.77M | ||
| 2023-2024 | $0 | $428.16M | ||
| 2020-2021 | $0 | $423.19M | ||
| 2025-2026 | $0 | $419.34M | ||
| 2025-2026 | $0 | $408.34M | ||
| 2020-2021 | $0 | $404.08M | ||
| 2020-2021 | $0 | $392.58M | ||
| 2025-2026 | $0 | $383.86M | ||
| 2025-2026 | $0 | $370.32M | ||
| 2022-2023 | $0 | $343.32M | ||
| 2025-2026 | $0 | $330.36M | ||
| 2025-2026 | $0 | $320.07M | ||
| 2022-2023 | $0 | $314.99M | ||
| 2025-2026 | $0 | $313.01M | ||
| 2019-2020 | $0 | $298.22M | ||
| 2016-2017 | $0 | $293.23M | ||
| 2024-2025 | $0 | $280.16M | ||
| 2025-2026 | $0 | $238.46M | ||
| 2025-2026 | $0 | $232.58M | ||
| 2025-2026 | $0 | $218.20M |
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III
The Alberta record
What Alberta’s open data already shows, and what we’d need to prove more
What the open record already shows
- · grants + recipient_fiscal_year_summary — full time-series of funding continuity.
- · recipient_for_profit_tier, recipient_vendor_tiers.
- · School-authority registry + school_authority_lineage — working temporal-validity template.
- · government_appointments — detects boards with no recent appointments.
- · Provenance via source_datasets — freshness queryable.
What we’d need to prove more
- · Alberta Corporate Registry (status, filings, address) — no open bulk data (blocker).
- · CRA T3010 — open bulk CSV (also powers Challenge 9).
- · Federal Corporations Canada, address verification, heuristic layer for inactivity.
IV
What’s missing from the open record
4 gaps this chapter would close if the data were public
What's Missing
These datasets would be needed to make the canonical claim. Each row names what it would unlock and where it stands today.
Alberta Corporate Registry
AB · Paywalled / closedConfirms incorporation status (active, dissolved, struck) and registered address recency. Without this, 'dissolved but funded' cannot be made canonical from open data.
Per-lookup paid; no open bulk
Alberta Societies Registry
AB · Paywalled / closedConfirms whether non-profit societies and registered charities remain in good standing with annual returns filed. Closes the gap for societies that the corporate registry does not cover.
No open bulk
CRA T3010 List of Charities
Fed · OpenFederal charity status with revoked / annulled flags. Tightens the proxy from 'dormant' to 'revoked charity, still funded' for the charitable-recipient subset.
CSV, annual, 12–18mo lag
Corporations Canada (CBCA)
Fed · OpenFederal corporate status for federally incorporated entities. Covers the subset of recipients that incorporate under the CBCA rather than the provincial Business Corporations Act.
XML bulk + API; federal corps only
V
Datasets we’d need (full inventory)
11 datasets that bear on this chapter — name, jurisdiction, and what's currently public
| Dataset | Jurisdiction | Publicly available? | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| grants fact + recipient rollups | AB | Published | via ab_spending |
| School authority registry + lineage | AB | Published | Alberta Education CKAN — ingested |
| Alberta Corporate Registry | AB | Not published | Per-lookup paid; no open bulk |
| Alberta Societies Registry | AB | Not published | No open bulk |
| CRA List of Charities (T3010) | Fed | Published | CSV, annual, 12–18mo lag |
| CRA Charities Listings (status) | Fed | Published | CSV + HTML |
| Corporations Canada (federal CBCA) | Fed | Published | XML bulk + API; federal corps only |
| CBCA ISC beneficial ownership | Fed | Partial | Name + partial DOB; federal corps only |
| PSPC Ineligible Suppliers List | Fed | Partial | HTML only, no history |
| Unified federal+provincial entity registry | — | Not published | 13 siloed registries |
| 'Still active' attestation at payment time | Any | Not published | Not collected anywhere |
VI
What open data still can’t answer
3 datasets or linkages this chapter still needs to close the question — most are blocked at the source, not the analysis.
- Alberta Corporate Registry (status, filings, address) — no open bulk data (blocker).
- CRA T3010 — open bulk CSV (also powers Challenge 9).
- Federal Corporations Canada, address verification, heuristic layer for inactivity.
See chapter 11 · the data-gaps matrix for the full inventory.