How to find government tenders in Canada (2026 guide)

There is no single place where every Canadian government tender is posted. The federal government has one portal; each province and territory has its own; and cities, school boards, hospitals, universities and crown corporations post on hundreds of separate sites and platforms. That is why vendors miss bids — not because the work is secret, but because it is scattered. This guide walks through where the notices live and how to cover them.

1. Federal: CanadaBuys

Federal departments and agencies post on CanadaBuys (canadabuys.canada.ca), run by Public Services and Procurement Canada. It replaced Buyandsell.gc.ca and is free to search. A notice there is called a tender opportunity; most carry the solicitation documents, the closing date, a contact and the amendments. To bid you need a free CanadaBuys account with a Procurement Business Number. EveryBid lists every open CanadaBuys notice on its CanadaBuys page and on the federal edition.

2. Provincial and territorial portals

Each province and territory runs its own procurement site, and the broader public sector in that province often posts there too — health authorities, colleges, sometimes municipalities. Some provinces bring nearly everyone onto one site; others leave cities, school boards and hospitals to post wherever they choose. Quebec’s public bodies post mostly in French.

EveryBid has an edition for every province and territory — Ontario, British Columbia, Quebec, Alberta and the rest — that gathers everything open there, from every level of government.

3. Municipalities and the MASH sector

This is where most of the volume is, and where it is hardest to keep up. Cities, regions, school boards, hospitals and universities post on a mix of commercial bid platforms and their own websites, and a single mid-size city can post in two places at once. Every EveryBid edition shows who is buying — municipal, provincial, federal, education, health — and each bid names its buyer.

4. How to search well

1. Search by what you sell, not by the buyer’s wording.The same work is titled “roofing”, “roof replacement”, “building envelope” and “réfection de toiture” on different portals. EveryBid classifies every notice into 19 categoriesand writes a plain-English summary, so a search for “roofing” finds all four.
2. Watch the deadline, not the posting date. Most competitions run two to six weeks. The notice you see today may close before you can assemble a bid; sort by closing date and start with what you can actually deliver.
3. Read the notice type. An RFI is not a contract; an ACAN can be challenged; a standing offer is a door that stays open. See the notice types explained.
4. Set up alerts. Every portal offers email alerts by commodity code. They are useful and noisy. A service that reads all the portals and matches to a profile of your company replaces a dozen of them.

5. Or let one page do it

EveryBid reads more than 900 Canadian portals through the day, removes the duplicates (the same notice is often on two or three sites), classifies each one and rewrites it in plain English. Today’s new bids are free to browse on the front page; members read every notice in full and get the ones that fit their company ranked each morning. It is one plan at CAD 29 a month.