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 $191,000, is worth nearly four 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.
The finding of the month: the share of mutual agreement swings widely by buyer
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 whose record was published from April 2025 to March 2026, counted by award process (one contract = one OCID). Buyer type identified from the organization's name.
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 counts about 57,100 contracts awarded, for $54.9 billion in the corpus as of August 22, 2026. 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 $191,000, is worth 3.9 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.
Why "provisional", and what that 82% means. A contract only appears on SEAO some time after it is awarded, and that lag isn't the same for everyone: contracts awarded without a call for tenders, many and small, take longer to be published than competitive notices. This barometer, however, files each contract in the month its SEAO record was published, not the month it was awarded. On that basis, the lag does not tell you which way a recent month's share will move: it only tells you that a month read early is incomplete, and that its dollar total is understated. That 82% describes the July 22, 2026 extraction; it is not an estimate of June's final share. That is why we anchor this barometer on twelve consolidated months, ending four months before publication, and never on the latest month alone.
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?
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), assigned to the analyzed period by the publication date of their SEAO record rather than by their 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.
Figures updated on August 27, 2026 (corpus as of August 22, 2026). The explanation of why the latest month is provisional had the publication lag the wrong way round; it is corrected, and this page's consolidated values are recomputed on the corpus as of that date.
- SEAO corpus in OCDS format: this page's consolidated values are recomputed on the corpus as of August 22, 2026; the reading for the month of June remains that of the July 22, 2026 extraction.
- Categorization by nature of good or service according to the Québec public-procurement nomenclature.
- Buyer type grouped by Adjudica from the organization's name.
The Barometer comes out every month: find all the editions as well as the full set of Adjudica analyses and data.
Adjudica
Got a live tender? Putting a bid together takes days. This buyer's history, prices included, is $190 plus taxes, delivered within one business day. Give us the notice number.
See the tender analysis