Which public buyer awards the most contracts without a call for tenders in Québec?

Based on the SEAO open data for the last twelve consolidated months, the health and social services network awards about 87% of its contracts without a call for tenders, the highest share. At the other end, school service centres award only about 49% without a call for tenders: they are the most competitive public buyers. Municipalities sit around 60% and provincial bodies around two thirds.

What share of public contracts is awarded by mutual agreement in Québec?

Over the consolidated months, a clear majority, on the order of 2 contracts in 3 by number, is awarded without a public call for tenders, most often by mutual agreement. Note: this is true by number of contracts, not by amount. Competitive contracts are only a third of the deals but more than three quarters of the dollars, because the largest contracts go through a call for tenders.

Québec Public Tenders Barometer, June 2026: The Share of Direct Awards Depends First on the Buyer

Q: Should you adapt your sales strategy to the type of public body?

Yes. With a buyer that awards mostly without a call for tenders, such as a health facility, your best lever is to be referenced and known before the need appears. With a buyer that puts its contracts out to tender, such as a school service centre, your lever is the quality of your bid on the day the notice drops. The same effort does not produce the same result depending on the body's way in.

The essentials in 30 seconds

Based on the SEAO open data, the share of contracts awarded without a call for tenders depends first on the type of buyer: about 87% in the health network, versus 49% at school service centres, which put nearly half of their contracts out to tender.
The core finding holds: over the last twelve consolidated months, nearly 2 public contracts in 3 are awarded without a call for tenders, for a median contract around $66,000.
Only a third of contracts, the competitive ones, carry more than three quarters of the dollars: the median competitive contract, about $189,000, is worth more than three times the median mutual-agreement contract, about $50,000.

Every month, we read the SEAO open data (the public registry of Québec government contracts) to pull out what matters for an SME. June 2026 edition. This time one figure stands out: how a public contract gets awarded depends first on who is buying.

Edition updated on July 22, 2026. A methodology revision reclassified mandated purchases (groupings of bodies led by UMQ, FQM or the Société québécoise des infrastructures) as tenders rather than sole-source contracts. Value shares and the by-buyer breakdown were recomputed; the overall finding, a clear majority of contracts awarded without a call for tenders by count, is unchanged. Details in our methodology note.

We talk about public procurement as a single block. The data says otherwise. Over the last twelve months with consolidated data (April 2025 to March 2026), the share of contracts awarded without a call for tenders varies sharply by type of public body:

Health and social services network: about 87% of contracts are awarded without a call for tenders. Almost everything there plays out through referencing and direct awards. And this is not an effect of grouped purchasing: in that network, grouped or mandated buys account for less than 1% of contracts. It is mutual agreement in the strict sense.
School service centres: 49%. These are the most competitive public buyers in the corpus. Nearly half of their contracts go through a call for tenders.
Municipalities: around 60%; provincial bodies: around two thirds (67%), close to the overall average.

Source: Adjudica analysis of the SEAO open data, contracts awarded from April 2025 to March 2026, counted by award process (one contract = one OCID). Buyer type identified from the organization's name.

Info

What this means for you. Your strategy should not be the same depending on the body you target. Facing a buyer that awards mostly without a call for tenders, such as a health facility, the goal is to be known and referenced before the need exists. Facing a buyer that puts its contracts out to tender, such as a school service centre, the goal is the quality of your bid on the day the notice drops. The same sales effort does not produce the same result on either side.

The core finding hasn't moved

The overall structure stays stable, month after month. Over these twelve consolidated months, SEAO records nearly 56,900 contracts awarded, for about $52 billion. Of these, nearly 2 in 3 are awarded without a call for tenders (on the order of 64%), most often by mutual agreement. The median contract runs around $66,000: half of public contracts come in below that.

That single figure hides two distinct markets. Mutual-agreement contracts are many but small. Competitive contracts are few but heavy:

Only a third of contracts go through a call for tenders. Yet they concentrate more than three quarters of the dollars.
The median competitive contract, about $189,000, is worth 3.8 times the median mutual-agreement contract, about $50,000.

An SME with 5 to 50 employees plays mainly in the first market, the volume market, where the $25,000 to $100,000 band alone holds 6 contracts in 10. The value market is won at the bid, and that is where the money sits. We spell out that mechanic in our article on contracts by mutual agreement.

The most recent month: June 2026 (provisional figures)

For June 2026, SEAO data as of July 22, 2026 counts roughly 4,600 contracts awarded. The share without a call for tenders looks very high there, around 82%, well above the consolidated trend.

Warning

Why "provisional", and why that 82% isn't the real figure. Contracts are published on SEAO with a lag after they are concluded, and that lag isn't the same for everyone. Large contracts from a call for tenders come in more slowly than direct awards. The most recent month therefore temporarily overrepresents mutual agreement and understates the amounts, until the competitive notices are published. That is why we anchor this barometer on the consolidated months (nearly 2 in 3), and never on the latest month alone. June's 82% will settle back toward the trend over the coming weeks.

The most active sectors

By number of contracts over the consolidated period, the fields most present on SEAO: buildings (11%), maintenance and repair of goods and equipment (9%), architecture and engineering services (8%), professional and administrative support services (7%), computer hardware and software (6%) and civil engineering works (6%). Half of contracts are services, a third are goods, and under a fifth are works. You don't need to be a construction firm to sell to the government.

What to take away

Québec public procurement isn't one market, but several, depending on who is buying. By number of contracts, it stays dominated by mutual agreement (nearly 2 in 3) and by contracts of a manageable size (median around $66,000). What's new in this edition is the breakdown by buyer: a health supplier sells first by getting referenced, a schools supplier sells first by bidding. The useful question becomes: who is my buyer, and through which door do they award?

Tip

Your move this month. List the public bodies you target and sort each into its family: health, education, municipal, provincial. For those that award mostly without a call for tenders, check that your listing in SEAO's Supplier Directory is up to date and that your product codes properly cover what you do: that is what decides whether the buyer finds you. For those that put contracts out to tender, put your energy instead into monitoring notices and into the quality of your bids. We explain the first step in the guide on how to register on SEAO.

Methodology

The figures in this barometer come from the SEAO open data (Système électronique d'appel d'offres). We keep awarded contracts (with a supplier and an amount greater than zero), dated within the analyzed period (a SEAO extract republishes old records, so we filter on the award date), counting by award process (one contract = one OCID). The "consolidated" shares cover the twelve months with stabilized data, from April 2025 to March 2026; the most recent months are set aside from the trend because the publication lag distorts them, and flagged as provisional.

Buyer type is identified from the organization's name (SEAO's buyer identifier is unstable), then grouped into four families: health and social services network, school service centres, municipal bodies, provincial and other bodies. This classification carries a margin of error, but the gaps observed between families (from 49% to 87%) are far larger than that margin. Shares are always computed within a single family. The amounts are orders of magnitude; no company is named.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

Data source

Dataset: “Système électronique d’appel d’offres (SEAO)”, published by the Secrétariat du Conseil du trésor (Québec Treasury Board Secretariat), released on Données Québec under the CC BY 4.0 licence.

Processing: data extracted, cleaned and analysed by Adjudica; the figures shown result from this processing and are not an official SEAO publication. See our data.

SEAO corpus in OCDS format, Adjudica extraction through July 22, 2026.
Categorization by nature of good or service according to the Québec public-procurement nomenclature.
Buyer type grouped by Adjudica from the organization's name.

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