Procurement occurs across all levels of the Canadian government. The buyers, terminology, regulation, and reporting differ in every jurisdiction. To unify data from all included jurisdictions, the IJF has assembled its own nomenclature to best suit them all.

Buyer and Supplier

Procurement is a relationship between buyers (government bodies) and suppliers (outside third-parties). There are far more suppliers than buyers, totalling more than 100,00 and just 539, respectively. The most significant buyers are recognizable groups, like the Department of National Defence or BC Hydro. The most significant suppliers are often less recognizable, but nonetheless offer the government major services, such as the Canadian Corps of Commissionaires.

Contracting and End User Organization

In some cases, one government department will administer a bidding process on behalf of another client department. Following CanadaBuys, the IJF’s database refers to these roles as contracting organization and end user organization. In many other cases, departments conduct procurement on their own behalf.

At the federal level, two departments most often serve as contracting organizations: Public Services and Procurement Canada and Shared Services Canada. 

Tenders, Awards and Solicitations

When buyers seek a product, they publish one or more tenders, describing their interests and requirements. Prospective suppliers respond to the tender by proposing their services to the buyer. The buyer chooses one or more of these bids and issues awards, describing an agreement for the company to supply the requirement for some dollar value. The resulting combination of tenders and awards is a solicitation, a grouping of closely related procurement activity. 

CanadaBuys, one of the two federal sources, uses the solicitation structure to organize its procurement data. To present all data uniformly, we have extrapolated it to cover the other sources.

Limitations

  • Not all tenders result in awards. 
  • But not all awards have tenders. Jurisdictions sometimes use the “award” item in their platforms to post Standing Offers and Supply Arrangements, which are not actually awarded contracts but overtures to future contracts with any of the named suppliers.
  • Individual tenders cannot always be linked to individual awards; they can only be placed in the same solicitation. Solicitations can include multiples of both tenders and awards. None of our covered jurisdictions indicate from which tender each award originates.
  • Not all jurisdictions make both tenders and awards available. See Catalogue of Sources.
  • Award values refer to the amount the government has committed to spending on the contract. They are not a record of funds paid to suppliers.

Amendments

Amendments are modifications to tenders or awards. For tenders, amendments can modify the bidding window, description or other details. When a tender has been amended, IJF’s procurement database displays information from the most recent modification. The record’s amendment date will also reflect the most recent amendment.

For awards, amendments can increase or decrease the dollar amount of the contract. In addition to displaying information from the most recent amendment, the procurement database displays the sequence of all changes to the contract’s value in the award’s Amendment History section. The cumulative value of a contract and all amendments is displayed as its total value. All aggregate dollar amounts that appear in the database are calculated using contracts’ cumulative values.

Type

The Type field identifies the procurement process associated with a tender. In some cases, jurisdictions use different labels to refer to the same process. Some types identify informational or screening steps, rather than procurement processes.

The IJF has consolidated each source’s options into a uniform list of types that are used across the database:

  • Request for Proposal: A procurement method where bids are solicited from suppliers for a specific project or service.
  • Request for Quotation: A procurement method where price quotes are solicited from suppliers for a specific project or service.
  • Request for Information: An opportunity for suppliers to provide information on their qualifications and interest before a Request for Proposal is issued.
  • Supply Arrangement: A procurement method where bids are solicited from a group of pre-qualified suppliers.
  • Standing Offer: A method to establish a relationship with suppliers, with orders made by the client when the need arises.
  • Request for Qualifications: A screening step used to establish a list of qualified suppliers.
  • Invitation to Tender: A procurement method where bids are solicited for a project with clearly defined requirements, and the project is awarded to the lowest bidder.
  • Invitation to Quote: A procurement method where price quotes are solicited from suppliers for a specific project or service.
  • Invitation to Qualify: A step used to establish a list of qualified suppliers.
  • Notice to Suppliers: A document communicating to suppliers about a procurement opportunity.
  • Notice of Intent: A document announcing the intent to award a contract without a bidding process.
  • Advance Contract Award Notice: A notice issued when an agency intends to issue a contract to a pre-identified supplier, giving other suppliers an opportunity to submit statements of capabilities.
  • Directed Contract: A contract awarded without a bidding process.
  • Multi-Use List: A list of pre-qualified suppliers that can be used for multiple procurements.

Method

Solicitation method defines the level of competition in both the accessibility of bidding and awarding of contracts. Currently, it exists only in Federal data because B.C., Vancouver and Victoria do not disclose an equivalent field. See Method.

Status

Status defines various states in the life cycle of a tender:

  • Open: Tender is actively accepting bids.
  • Closed: Tender is no longer accepting bids.
  • Cancelled: Tender process was cancelled.
  • Awarded:
    • In PSPC and British Columbia data, Awarded identifies tenders that are part of a solicitation which also contain awards. The status appears alongside one of the other three statuses.
    • In Victoria and Vancouver, Awarded identifies tenders that have been awarded, and is separate from the other three statuses.

Documents

Buyers often supplement their tenders with documents, though they are not available in all sources. 

Documents are unstructured digital files setting out anything from budgets to technical specifications. All documents are available to download from our own servers, and all PDF and Microsoft Word documents have been indexed for searching, meaning you can search by phrases occurring only in attached documents and find the associated tender.

Trade Agreements

Trade Agreements regulate procurement within Canada and between Canada and other nations. They set procedural requirements designed to lower trade barriers between parties, while also reducing protectionism and discrimination.

Each agreement affecting federal procurement is gathered here. In addition to these, B.C. is part of the New West Partnership (NWPTA) agreement with the Prairie provinces. Each agreement is highly specific and sets out its own rules for affected contracts.

Not all procurement is subject to all agreements, but each contract can be subject to many at once. The agreements have value thresholds (found here; NWPTA here), over which any activity is subject to its requirements. Likewise, certain government entities and required products are also covered by agreements; for example, the primary agreement between Canada and the European Union covers hundreds of different federal, provincial and territorial government buyers. 

The Canadian Free Trade Agreement affects procurement within Canada, involving federal or provincial buyers. North American procurement is often governed by the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), which superseded the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on July 1, 2020. The World Trade Organization Agreement on Government Procurement, according to the PSPC supply manual, sets the strongest procedural standards in most cases.