Running a small business in Halifax means doing the marketing, the bookkeeping, and the hiring yourself, usually with nobody to check your thinking against. What most owners do not realize is that free business support exists close by, through Halifax Partnership, the region’s economic development agency. One-on-one consulting, a directory of funding and programs, and help getting ready for disruptions are all available at no cost to any registered business in Halifax Regional Municipality. The catch is that almost nobody asks for it.

What Halifax Partnership actually is

Halifax Partnership is the economic development agency for Halifax Regional Municipality, working alongside the municipality to grow the local business base. Its SmartBusiness Services team offers no-cost, one-on-one support to registered businesses across HRM, aimed at expanding into new markets, strengthening supply chains, improving productivity, and connecting owners to funding they would otherwise have to hunt for on their own.

The SmartBusiness program: one-on-one help that costs nothing

This is the core of what Halifax Partnership offers a working business owner. You get matched with someone on the SmartBusiness team, and through them, a network of more than 30 public, private, and post-secondary partners across the region. The program works with over 450 businesses a year across HRM, urban and rural alike.

Who is this actually for?

Any registered business operating in Halifax Regional Municipality qualifies, including businesses in rural parts of HRM, not just the peninsula. You do not need to be a certain size or have a certain revenue to ask for a first conversation.

Other free tools worth knowing about

Beyond the one-on-one consulting, a few pieces of the program are easy to miss. The Business Resource Directory is a browsable list of funding, labour, and research and development programs pulled from Halifax Partnership’s full partner network, so you are not hunting through a dozen government sites on your own. The Business Continuity Toolkit is practical guidance for keeping a business running through a hurricane, flood, or wildfire, which is not a hypothetical for anyone who has run a business here through the last few storm seasons. There is also the Connector Program, which matches business owners with newcomers to Halifax and recent graduates looking to build a professional network locally, worth a look if you are trying to hire and keep missing on fit.

If a labour shortage has you looking outside Canada for the right person, Halifax Partnership can also help with the employer side of the Atlantic Immigration Program. And if you are closer to hiring your first Nova Scotia-based employee rather than looking abroad, I wrote a separate step-by-step piece on what has to happen before that first shift.

How to actually connect with them

1. Go to the “Connect with us” contact tool on halifaxpartnership.com, found in the local business support section.
2. Choose the option closest to your situation, such as growing your local business, and you get routed to the right person rather than a general inbox.
3. Or skip the form and call directly at 902-490-6000, or toll-free at 1-800-565-1191.
4. Expect a real conversation about your business first, not a sales pitch for anything.
5. Ask specifically about SmartBusiness Services and the Business Resource Directory by name, since the first person you reach may not walk you through everything unprompted.
6. Make sure your business is actually registered in Nova Scotia before you call. The program is limited to registered businesses.

What this actually costs

Nothing, in dollars. The consulting itself carries no fee and no minimum commitment. What it costs is time: budget half an hour for an introductory call, and more if they connect you to a funding program or partner organization with its own application. Some of what you get referred to afterward, a grant, a loan program, a research partnership, will have its own eligibility rules and paperwork. The Halifax Partnership conversation itself is the free part. What comes out of it depends on your business.

Worth the ten minutes

I hear a version of the same story more often than I would like: an owner finds out about a program or a grant deadline months too late, usually from another business owner at a networking event, and wonders why nobody told them sooner. Halifax Partnership is not flashy, and it will not run your marketing or fix your cash flow for you. But it is a real phone number connected to a real person who spends their day tracking what is available to a business like yours in this region. Before you pay a consultant to tell you what programs exist, it is worth ten minutes to find out what your own economic development agency already offers for free.

One practical note, since this is what I do for a living. As a business picks up new funding, staff, or a program through something like Halifax Partnership, the coverage that fit a one-person operation usually does not fit what comes next, so it is worth a check-in as things grow. You can read more about how I work with Halifax businesses on my about page, and for more on running and growing a business here, browse the rest of the Halifax Business Blog.

About the author. Rayanur Rahman writes about running and growing a business in Halifax. He is a commercial insurance broker with Western Financial Group in Bedford, Nova Scotia, and works with businesses of every kind across the Halifax Regional Municipality. Reach him at 902-321-1712 or book a 30 minute call.

Sources: Halifax Partnership: SmartBusiness Services. Halifax Partnership: How we can support your small business. Halifax Partnership: Contact. Photo by snap shoot on Unsplash. Photo by Markus Spiske on Pexels. Photo by Adventure Studio on Pexels. Prices and program details checked September 2026 and can change. General information only.