I can speak a bit for western canada; Vancouver has seen many of the larger/top companies open offices: Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, etc. so plenty of jobs to be had there. I live in Calgary and have seen many peers move to Vancouver for better job prospects.

Re: SRED credits - I've been a part of the application process twice. Documentation can be a bit cumbersome, but not much more than 5 minutes summarizing the weeks work in a spreadsheet (for each employee), and tracking their hours spent on related tasks. Add in source control and the numerous artifacts that software devs come up with, means low amount of effort for high payout. And by high payout, I'm talking 1-2 devs salary in a 10 dev shop. We also hired a consulting company that specialized in SRED applications which saved us a ton of overhead. Cost 10-20% of payout, but was worth not having to deal with the application and/or any audits had they occurred.