My opinion of SRED is mostly negative based on some experience (albeit out of date, from the late 90s and early 00s) and talking to people I know who were trying to get SRED money.

In one instance, a company I worked for hired a consultant to do the application. This consultant basically interviewed everyone on the technical team and tried to coax us into saying every piece of functionality was novel and innovative, whether it was true or not. I came out of that meeting feeling so dirty that I wanted to shower for a couple of hours.

My other experiences were working in companies (or knowing of other people in other companies) who were applying for and getting SRED money where the R&D innovations were at best questionable.

As someone who works in tech, I want programs like SRED to work. On the other hand, being a taxpayer and seeing how some companies are getting SRED money for arguably undeserving R&D work makes me think SRED is a complete waste of taxpayer money.