Bidding on Quebec public tenders from outside Quebec

If your company is not in Quebec and not in Ontario, the question that decides everything is narrow: is there an agreement that covers where you are, and is this contract big enough to engage it?

Everything else — registration, attestations, licences — is work you can do. That one question is the gate, and it is answered differently depending on which side of the Canadian border you are on.

Why the question is put that way

Quebec public bodies may require a bidder to have an establishment where it carries on business permanently. Section 6 of the Règlement sur les contrats de travaux de construction des organismes publics puts it as a condition of admissibility: the establishment must be in Quebec, or in a territory covered by an applicable intergovernmental agreement.

So a supplier outside Quebec does not qualify on its merits. It qualifies because a trade agreement says the contract must be open to it — and agreements only bite above a threshold.

There is one narrow exception written into the same section: where competition is insufficient, a public body may make a contractor from an uncovered territory admissible, provided it says so in the tender documents. It is a relief valve for the buyer, not a route you can plan around.

The agreements Quebec is bound by

The government publishes the list, and it is shorter than most suppliers expect:

• ALEC — the Canadian Free Trade Agreement, between the federal, provincial and territorial governments. This is the route for every other Canadian province and territory.
• ACCQO — the Quebec–Ontario Trade and Cooperation Agreement, which on some contracts opens the market earlier than CFTA does.
• AECG — the Canada–European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, covering the 27 EU member states.
• AMP-OMC — the WTO Agreement on Government Procurement, covering its other parties.
• EQO2006 — a narrow Quebec–Ontario agreement on labour mobility and qualification recognition in construction.

Municipal bodies are additionally covered by an agreement with New Brunswick.

The CPTPP is not on that list. That is worth stating plainly, because it is the agreement a supplier in Japan, Australia, Vietnam or Mexico is most likely to assume covers them. For Quebec public procurement, it does not. If you are outside the European Union and outside the WTO GPA parties, there may be no agreement opening these contracts to you at all — and the honest answer is to check that before spending anything on a bid.

The United Kingdom is a case worth naming: since 1 January 2021 it is outside CETA, and Canada–UK public procurement runs under the WTO agreement instead.

The thresholds are higher for you than for a Canadian supplier

From the Secrétariat du Conseil du trésor's table of application thresholds, dated 1 January 2026.

For another Canadian province or territory, under CFTA, with a government department: supplies at 34,7 k$, services at 139,0 k$, construction at 139,0 k$. In the education and health networks, construction opens at 347,4 k$.

For a European Union supplier, under CETA, with the same department: supplies and services at 368,0 k$, construction at 9,2 M$.

For a supplier of a WTO GPA party: 653,2 k$ for supplies and services with a government department, 9,2 M$ for construction.

The pattern is the point. A supplier in Manitoba and a supplier in Germany are not looking at the same market: the Manitoba firm is admissible on a service contract roughly two and a half times smaller, and on a construction contract sixty-six times smaller. Which agreement covers you determines how much of the market you can see, not merely whether you can bid.

Two mechanical notes. CFTA and Quebec–Ontario thresholds are indexed every two years for inflation; the CETA and WTO thresholds are fixed in Special Drawing Rights and converted, so their Canadian-dollar figures move with the exchange rate. The current set runs to 31 December 2027.

And you do not have to derive any of this per contract. Every public tender notice must state whether an intergovernmental agreement applies, and which — it is a required field, set out in section 4 of the regulation above. Read the field.

What CETA gives you beyond access

Where CETA applies, it also fixes how the tender must be run: the notice has to offer an overview of the intended procurement, carry the essential information for submitting an offer, and allow a sufficient period to respond — at least 30 days, or 25 where electronic submission is permitted. The tender documents must describe the requirements, the evaluation criteria, and the relative weight of those criteria and how they will be applied.

That last obligation is the useful one. On a CETA-covered contract, an evaluation grid you cannot see is not the norm you have to accept.

What is excluded

The agreements carve out a real list: legal services from lawyers and notaries, financial services, and health and social services contracts are generally exempt, as are advertising and public relations contracts and goods bought for resale to the public. Legal advice on international and foreign law is covered, and so are accounting, audit and bookkeeping services. The full list lives in the agreement texts, and the exclusions differ between CFTA and CETA — CETA's list of covered services is the narrower of the two.

The administrative layer, once you are past the gate

It is the same for every supplier, and Quebec publishes it as a checklist: an attestation from Revenu Québec on contracts of 25 000 $ and more; an authorization from the Autorité des marchés publics at 1 M$ for services and 5 M$ for construction and public-private partnerships; proof of compliance with the Charte de la langue française where you employ 25 or more people in Quebec over six months; and absence from the register of enterprises ineligible for public contracts.

A legal person not constituted in Quebec that carries on an activity here must also register with the Registraire des entreprises within 60 days of starting, and receives a Quebec enterprise number.

Construction work needs a licence from the Régie du bâtiment du Québec, and submitting a bid to carry out construction work is itself an act the licence covers.

Contracts with the Administration are drawn up exclusively in French, under section 21 of the Charte de la langue française. Budget for that the way you would budget for a certified translation, because that is what it is.

Where to start looking

Notices are published in SEAO, and the tender documents can be obtained only through it. We list the currently open notices without an account, and publish a market report for each of the seventeen administrative regions built from published notices alone.

If you are sizing the opportunity rather than chasing one contract, the region reports are the better read: they show what is actually tendered where, and by whom.

Verified on 22 August 2026

Figures read from their sources on that date; the threshold set runs to 31 December

1. The list of agreements, the attestation thresholds and the licensing rules can

change at any time. This describes how the process works and is not legal advice.