Public Procurement in Québec: Nearly 6 in 10 Contracts Without a Call for Tenders, but Barely 1 Dollar in 4

Adjudica analysis, 2026-05-25, complete 2021-2023 corpus, method by unique OCID.

Of the 158,349 public contracts registered on SEAO between January 2021 and December 2023, 58.3% were awarded without a call for tenders, nearly 6 in 10. But these contracts represent only 24.2% of the dollars awarded, barely 1 dollar in 4: mutual agreement is frequent, but it covers small contracts. Conversely, 75.8% of the value, more than 3 dollars in 4, goes through a call for tenders. "Without a call for tenders" here means strict mutual agreement (a direct contract according to the award method published on SEAO) and a few marginal methods, with no formal competition; this scope excludes invitation-only calls for tenders and those run by a mandated body (groupings of bodies), which involve competition. Including invitation-only calls for tenders, the share of contracts not arising from an open public call for tenders reaches roughly 68%. Adjudica analysis based on SEAO open data (OCDS format), corpus as of July 22, 2026, with checks against the Québec enterprise register for the named passages.

TL;DR in 30 seconds

• 158,349 public contracts on SEAO 2021-2023, $104 billion awarded in total
• 58.3% awarded without a call for tenders (mutual agreement or direct purchase) by count, 24.2% by value, roughly 68% if you include invitation-only calls for tenders
• Plateau in 2022-2023: 54.8% (2021) → 59.4% (2022) → 60.3% (2023). Not a collapse, but a structural feature
• 6 sector categories where more than 75% of contracts are awarded by strict mutual agreement (health, training, paper, medical equipment, admin support, IT)
• 4 mechanisms explain most of it: purchases below the thresholds, exclusive rights and technological continuity, large contracts authorized by order-in-council, emergency purchases (COVID)
• Immediate action for SMEs: identify your SEAO category and adapt your strategy to contracts awarded outside a call for tenders

Who this article is for For SMEs that bid (or want to bid) on public tenders in Québec and wonder why so many contracts slip past them. For business leaders who want to understand how public procurement really works, beyond what SEAO shows.

Contents

1. The methodology, why 1 contract ≠ 1 SEAO line
2. The raw finding in figures
3. Why mutual agreement exists: what the law says
4. The 4 mechanisms that explain most of it
5. The categories where strict mutual agreement dominates
6. Who the beneficiaries are: top 10 suppliers
7. The trend, a plateau, not a collapse
8. What it changes for your commercial strategy

1. The methodology: why 1 contract ≠ 1 SEAO line

Before the figures, a critical methodological note. SEAO publishes its data in OCDS format (Open Contracting Data Standard) via Données Québec. In this format, a single public contract can generate several lines: initial notice, addenda, bids, award, amendments, additional spending. Counting each line as a separate contract is misleading, and the effect isn't symmetrical across methods.

A call for tenders publishes multiple events across the process (notice, addenda, openings, award), whereas a mutual-agreement contract publishes only once, after award. Counting raw lines therefore mechanically underestimates the share of mutual agreement, since competitive contracts generate far more lines.

Our analysis counts by procurement process, identified by the OCID (Open Contracting Identifier), one contract = one process, and not one raw line of the OCDS feed. It's the fairest method for comparing award methods. Every figure in this article follows this rule.

2. The raw finding in figures

Between January 1, 2021 and December 31, 2023, 158,349 unique public contracts were registered on SEAO with an awarded amount above zero. The cumulative total: $104 billion awarded by about 1,700 public bodies to more than 40,000 distinct suppliers (published contract value, not payments actually made).

Breakdown by method (mutually exclusive categories):

Our key statistic, the 58.3%, groups the contracts awarded without any call for tenders: strict mutual agreement (58.3%) and a few marginal methods, for 92,343 contracts. This figure excludes two categories that involve competition. First, the 3,569 contracts (2.3%) awarded through a mandated purchase or grouping of bodies: a mandated body (such as UMQ, FQM or the Société québécoise des infrastructures) runs a call for tenders on behalf of several organizations; SEAO publishes these as an open procedure and most receive several bids. Second, the 15,443 contracts (9.8%) awarded following an invitation-only call for tenders, a competition restricted to invited suppliers, without an open public notice. Adding invitation-only to strict mutual agreement, the share of contracts not arising from an open public call for tenders reaches roughly 68%. We keep the 58.3% as the primary statistic because it isolates the contracts awarded with no form of competition at all.

TL;DR: 92,343 contracts out of 158,349 (58.3%) were awarded without any call for tenders: strict mutual agreement (58.3%) and marginal methods. Mandated purchases or groupings (2.3%) and contracts following an invitation-only call for tenders (9.8%) involve competition, counted separately: adding invitation-only, roughly 68% of contracts do not come from an open public call for tenders open to all.

The contrast in proportions between count and value is telling:

In other words: contracts without a call for tenders are more numerous but smaller. The median strict mutual-agreement contract is $50,000, versus $180,000 for a contract awarded through competition (open, invitation-only or run by a mandated body). The median stays low, but a few mega-projects top a billion dollars (see section 6).

3. Why mutual agreement exists: what the law says

Mutual agreement isn't illegal. It's framed.

The Act respecting contracting by public bodies (LCOP) sets the general rule at its section 10: the public bodies covered must use a public call for tenders for supply, service or construction contracts whose expenditure meets or exceeds the minimum threshold set by the applicable intergovernmental agreements, as well as for any partnership contract.

Section 13 of the LCOP then provides the five categories of exception where a contract that reaches this threshold may still be entered into by mutual agreement:

1. Emergency: a situation where the safety of persons or property is at stake.
2. Only possible contractor: because of a warranty, a right of ownership or an exclusive right (copyright, patent, exclusive licence), or because of the artistic, heritage or museological value of the good or service.
3. Confidentiality or protected information: where a public call for tenders would risk compromising the nature of the information or harming the public interest.
4. Public interest: where the body demonstrates that a public call for tenders would not serve the public interest. In that case, a notice of intention must be published on SEAO at least 15 days before the contract is entered into (s. 13.1 LCOP), with the mechanism for responding to interested businesses provided in section 13.2 LCOP.
5. Other cases determined by regulation: including specific situations set out in the sector-specific regulations (R&D, legal services, contracts abroad, certain IT contracts, etc.).

Recourse to paragraphs 2 to 4 must be authorized by the head of the body, who reports on it annually to the Conseil du trésor.

Four regulations spell out the conditions by contract type:

• RCA: Regulation respecting certain supply contracts of public bodies (CQLR, c. C-65.1, r. 2)
• RCS: Regulation respecting certain service contracts of public bodies (CQLR, c. C-65.1, r. 4)
• RCTC: Regulation respecting construction work contracts of public bodies (CQLR, c. C-65.1, r. 5)
• RCTI: Regulation respecting contracts of public bodies in the field of information technologies (CQLR, c. C-65.1, r. 5.1)

Important, the regimes aren't uniform. The roughly 1,700 bodies in the corpus (counted by normalized buyer name, since one body can carry several identifiers on SEAO) fall under different legal regimes. Departments, budget-funded bodies, and the health, education and higher-education networks fall under the LCOP. Municipalities and their paramunicipal bodies now fall mainly under the Act respecting contracting by municipal bodies (LCOM), in force April 1, 2026, which consolidates and restructures the rules previously scattered across the Cities and Towns Act and the Municipal Code. Crown corporations and government enterprises have their own contracting policies.

The Autorité des marchés publics (AMP), Québec's public procurement watchdog, was established by the Act respecting the Autorité des marchés publics passed in 2017, but its oversight powers came into force on January 25, 2019 for the initial powers and May 25, 2019 for the vast majority of its responsibilities. The AMP examines award and contracting processes, contract performance, conducts monitoring, verifies application of the law, investigates and can issue orders or recommendations. In particular, it can order a body not to proceed with an intention to contract by mutual agreement when a complainant demonstrates it is able to carry out the contract.

4. The 4 mechanisms that explain most of it

When you look at our 92,343 contracts awarded without a call for tenders 2021-2023 and cross them with the named data, four structural mechanisms stand out. They aren't legal rules in the strict sense; they're useful analytical groupings for understanding what the "mutual agreement" category hides in the SEAO data.

Mechanism 1: Purchases below the public tender thresholds

By far the largest. Public bodies can award a contract directly when its value is below the thresholds set by the market-liberalization agreements. As of January 1, 2026, several common public-tender thresholds sit at $139,000 (notably many service contracts and municipal bodies), while the threshold for goods of government departments and agencies of the government administration is $34,700. The applicable thresholds vary, though, by type of body, type of contract and applicable liberalization agreement; in construction, the SCT table distinguishes several tiers. Below these thresholds, mutual agreement is allowed, but neither mandatory nor automatic: the body can also proceed by call for tenders, in keeping with the principles set out in section 2 of the LCOP (transparency, honest and fair treatment of competitors, sound use of public funds), with section 14 framing how they are taken into account for contracts below the threshold. A mutual-agreement median of $50,000 confirms that this is where the bulk of the volume concentrates.

Mechanism 2: Exclusive rights and technological continuity

When a system, software, patent or expertise is already in place, the licence renewal, warranty extension or maintenance goes to the same supplier. Our top 10 mutual-agreement suppliers contain several cases where the justification ties to exclusive rights or documented technological continuity: Logibec (hospital management system, $771M across 639 contracts), Microsoft Canada (licences and services, $700M across 219 contracts), Oracle Canada ($205M across 310 contracts), Cardinal Health Canada (medical equipment, $239M). The exact legal characterization (s. 13(2) LCOP, only possible contractor because of an exclusive right, a warranty or a right of ownership) must be verified contract by contract; we don't conclude there's an exclusive right or a single supplier for every contract without access to the contract file.

Mechanism 3: Large contracts authorized by government order-in-council

Part of the very-high-value SEAO "mutual agreement" corresponds to large infrastructure projects whose contract is authorized by mutual agreement through a government order-in-council. Section 25 of the LCOP allows the government to authorize a body to enter into a contract on conditions different from those provided by the law, including by mutual agreement, when it considers it appropriate. These files often go through an upstream qualification phase, but the award of the final contract is formally authorized outside a call for tenders.

The single largest contract of our period, $1.65B awarded in 2022 by the Société québécoise des infrastructures (SQI) to the entity 9453-0748 Québec inc. for the new Vaudreuil-Soulanges hospital, falls into this category. Order-in-council 1275-2022 (June 29, 2022) authorized the SQI to enter into this construction-work contract by mutual agreement, using the design-build-finance mode. The project (an investment of roughly $2.6B) went through a qualification phase, and its construction is publicly associated with the contractor Pomerleau. The precise qualification of the entity 9453-0748 Québec inc. and the exact scope of the contract are read in light of the order-in-council and the SEAO data. The takeaway: a "mutual agreement" of this magnitude isn't an opaque award, but a contract whose method of delivery was expressly authorized by the government.

Mechanism 4: Emergency purchases (COVID-19)

The 2021-2023 window overlaps the final phases of the pandemic. To ensure the immediate acquisition of protective equipment, vaccines and logistics services, the government issued orders-in-council authorizing public bodies, particularly the MSSS and the Centre d'acquisitions gouvernementales, to invoke the emergency exception (s. 13(1) LCOP). Several large contracts in our period involve health procurement: about $437M to Investissements Gest-E Inc. (health-supply provider in a COVID context according to the SEAO data), and about $333M to AMD Medicom (supply of medical masks, mutual-agreement contract announced by the government). A contract of about $436M to Instrumentation Laboratory Canada concerns diagnostic medical equipment; absent an explicit contractual justification on SEAO, we don't classify it as a COVID emergency purchase. The general emergency-procurement context is documented by the Auditor General of Québec's report of May 2022 on PPE during the pandemic. We classify as emergency purchases only the contracts clearly tied to the health emergency, without ruling on the compliance or the appropriateness of each individual award.

5. The categories where strict mutual agreement dominates

Not every sector is equal when it comes to formal competition. Across the SEAO contract categories (the classification SEAO uses to group notices and contracts) with at least 500 contracts over 2021-2023, here are the 6 categories where more than 75% of contracts were awarded by strict mutual agreement:

These sector concentrations aren't a sign of systemic dysfunction. Several structural explanations add up.

Health and medical equipment: several contracts can be explained by exclusive rights, certifications, compatibility constraints or specific clinical needs. Patented drugs, imaging devices, proprietary diagnostic equipment, competition is often limited when a single company holds the rights to the required product. The exact legal justification remains to be verified contract by contract.

IT and information services: a technological lock-in effect ("vendor lock-in"). Public bodies using integrated management software packages or closed cloud environments have to renew maintenance, licences and training with the vendor. That's legally defensible case by case (s. 13(2) LCOP), but structurally it shrinks the zone of open competition.

Admin support, training, paper: a threshold effect. These categories generate an immense volume of small, decentralized transactions across the whole government, below the mandatory public-tender thresholds. The percentage inflates mechanically because these categories include a lot of micro-purchases.

Financial services: a limited pool of specialized players (actuarial work, management of specific assets, financial-data terminals), with frequent exclusive-expertise justifications.

Presenting these concentrations as a scandal would be incorrect. But presenting them as normal without qualification would be misleading too. For an SME that wants to access these markets, the right angle of attack is rarely bidding on a public call for tenders: it's more likely prior qualification, certification, or positioning yourself as a supplier able to cover a recurring need below the thresholds.

These gaps between sectors aren't trivial: they shape an SME's strategy. We break down, sector by sector, where mutual agreement dominates and how to position yourself in our dedicated analysis: the public sectors most closed to competition.

6. Who the beneficiaries are: top 10 suppliers

The 10 largest strict mutual-agreement suppliers 2021-2023, by cumulative value:

How to read this list. It doesn't point to "dubious winners." It reveals instead how public spending awarded without a call for tenders breaks down: an infrastructure mega-project authorized by order-in-council at the top, technology suppliers tied to systems already in place, medical distributors in a sector where eligibility often depends on prior certification, and health contracts concentrated on a few suppliers during the pandemic emergency phases (2021-2022). The article takes no position on the compliance, necessity or appropriateness of each individual award.

7. The trend: a plateau, not a collapse

A natural question: is the share of mutual agreement rising over time? Over 2021-2023, yes, but modestly.

The pattern is a plateau reached in 2022, not a sudden collapse. The main rise (2021 → 2022) coincides with the maintenance of emergency purchases coming out of the pandemic and the adjustment of the application thresholds of the liberalization agreements on January 1, 2022. The 2022 → 2023 progression is within the range of natural variation.

Important methodological note: an earlier data investigation (May 2024) on a partial corpus suggested a "jump" to 61% in 2023 versus 38% in 2021. That first calculation was biased by incomplete coverage of the 2021 SEAO files in the corpus of the time. With a complete 2021 corpus, the "jump" disappears: 2021 was already at 54.8%.

By value, the share without a call for tenders hovers around 24.2% over the three years, down after the end of the 2021 emergency purchases. In other words: the vast majority of public money, more than 3 dollars in 4, continues to go through calls for tenders; it's mostly the small and mid-sized contracts that are awarded directly.

8. What it changes for your commercial strategy

If you're a Québec SME looking at these figures, three operational lessons.

1. Spot your SEAO category, that's the first thing to do. If your activity falls into S7, S16, G21, G26, S13, S4 or S3 (architecture/engineering tied to construction), 60 to 90% of the market in your category is awarded outside an open call for tenders. Concentrating your whole strategy on the SEAO "notices of the day" monitoring means missing most of the market. Better to invest in the SEAO Supplier Directory, in sector certification registrations, and in direct business development with the public buyers in your region, in keeping with the lobbying and ethics rules applicable to communications with public bodies, see our complete SEAO guide and Contracts by mutual agreement in Québec for the precise thresholds.

2. Sub-threshold mutual agreement is the main entry point for an SME starting out. A median of $50,000, a simplified process, experience requirements often lower than a public tender. See Can you bid without experience?.

3. For "public interest" contracts above the threshold, watch the notices of intention published on SEAO. When a body wants to conclude a mutual-agreement contract above the threshold by invoking section 13, para. 1 (4) LCOP, it must publish a notice of intention 15 days in advance. That's your window to demonstrate you can deliver the contract. If you do it seriously, the AMP can order the body not to conclude the mutual-agreement contract.

Methodological appendix

The SEAO OCDS format starts in March 2021; the 2021-2023 corpus draws on the open SEAO data available for the whole period.

Period covered: January 1, 2021 → December 31, 2023 (3 full calendar years).

Filter applied: awards with amount > 0 and deduplication by (ocid, awardid) to remove technical duplicates.

Unit of count: the procurement process, identified by its OCID. A public contract corresponds to one procurement process, whatever the number of OCDS events published about it. This method is fairer than counting by raw event/release because it avoids the mechanical over-representation of competitive contracts, which generate far more lines than mutual agreement.

Classification: based on the OCDS procurementMethodDetails field. Our key statistic, the "without a call for tenders" figure (58.3%), groups contracts labeled "Contract by mutual agreement" (strict mutual agreement) and a few marginal methods. Two categories are excluded because they involve competition: "mandated purchases or groupings of bodies" (2.3%), where a mandated body runs a call for tenders on behalf of several organizations and which SEAO publishes as an open procedure, and contracts "following an invitation-only call for tenders" (9.8%), competitive but without an open public notice. Adding invitation-only to strict mutual agreement, the share of contracts not arising from an open public call for tenders reaches roughly 68%.

Article updated on July 22, 2026. Two methodology adjustments changed some figures: de-duplication of SEAO corpus exports (which lowers some totals) and the reclassification of mandated purchases as tenders rather than sole-source contracts. The figure-by-figure detail is in our methodology note.

The "$1.65B" remains a single contract, the Vaudreuil-Soulanges hospital, authorized by mutual agreement through an order-in-council: an award method provided for by law, not an irregularity.

Named verifications: for the suppliers and buyers cited by name (9453-0748 Québec inc. (contractor for the new Vaudreuil-Soulanges hospital authorized by order-in-council 1275-2022), Investissements Gest-E Inc., AMD Medicom, Microsoft Canada, Logibec), we consulted the records of the Québec enterprise register (REQ) to confirm the exact corporate name, the NEQ, the majority shareholder and the declared activity. The captures are archived in the publication file.

Limits of the analysis:

• The corpus doesn't capture public contracts below the SEAO publication threshold (generally $25,000 to $100,000 depending on the regimes and contract types), which are numerous but represent a small fraction of the total value.
• Some large contracts may be authorized by mutual agreement through a government order-in-council (s. 25 LCOP); their SEAO registration doesn't always reflect the upstream qualification phase. The top 10 suppliers account for this qualitatively.
• The 2021-2023 period includes the final phases of the COVID-19 pandemic, with high use of the emergency exception (s. 13(1) LCOP) particularly in 2021. Our analysis treats these contracts as a distinct mechanism, which lets us isolate them in reading the figures.

Reproduction: the scripts and the corpus used are available in the Adjudica repository (06-data-seao/seao-flywheel/). For any methodological question or extraction request on a particular period or sector, write to us.

To go further: Nearly one competitive call for tenders in three attracts only a single bidder, Contracts by mutual agreement in Québec for the thresholds and mechanisms, the complete SEAO guide, Can you bid without experience?, and 1% of winning suppliers take 28% of public contracts. Find all of Adjudica's analyses and data.

Sources

SEAO corpus in OCDS format, 2021-2023 contracts; LCOP (CQLR, c. C-65.1) sections 10, 13, 13.1, 13.2, 14, 15, 17, 18-21; LCOM (CQLR, c. C-65.01), in force April 1, 2026; Cities and Towns Act (CQLR, c. C-19) section 573; Act respecting the Autorité des marchés publics (CQLR, c. A-33.2.1) sections 1, 21, 22, 26, 29; RCA (CQLR, c. C-65.1, r. 2); RCS (r. 4); RCTC (r. 5); RCTI (r. 5.1); SCT, Info-marchés publics, bulletins January 2020, January 2022 and January 2026; SCT, Statistical report on the contracts of public bodies 2023-2024; AMP, Annual activity report 2023-2024; Auditor General of Québec, May 2022 report, chapter 4 (pandemic PPE); Québec enterprise register (REQ), consultations 2026-05-25 for 9453-0748 Québec inc., Investissements Gest-E Inc., AMD Medicom Inc., Logibec Inc., Microsoft Canada Inc.