Canada's lagging procurement systems | Macdonald-Laurier Institute

While governments have moved to reduce visible trade barriers, less attention has been paid to embedded constraints within procurement systems.

May 6, 2026

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OTTAWA, ON (May 6, 2026):

As governments across Canada move to strengthen internal trade, a major blind spot remains: how they buy goods and services.

Public procurement – one of the largest channels of public spending – still operates through siloed, hard-to-navigate systems that limit competition and drive up costs for taxpayers.

In Invisible internal trade barriers: How Canada’s fragmented, opaque procurement systems limit competition, Ryan Manucha and Joe Noss argue that procurement must be the next phase of reform for federal, provincial, and territorial governments.

The Trump administration’s ongoing tariff and trade war against Canada makes that task more urgent.

Canada’s push to free up internal trade gained momentum in 2025, as Ottawa and the provinces introduced legislation to deepen economic integration. But those efforts did not go far enough – and taxpayers are paying the price.

To evaluate how governments meet their procurement transparency obligations under the Canadian Free Trade Agreement (CFTA,) the authors developed a scoring framework to assess usability, data quality, coverage, and accessibility. Their conclusion is blunt: weak disclosure is undermining competition.

“Transparency and disclosure are central to addressing this problem,” they write. “When governments fail to publish clear, accessible procurement information, fewer firms bid and prices rise – imposing a direct fiscal burden on taxpayers.”

They identify three systemic problems:

Overreliance on private platforms with poor transparency.
The effective concealment of contracts within low-disclosure vendor lists.
A patchwork system that raises costs and deters participation when bidding for contracts.

Their solution is equally direct: adopt a common data standard, introduce a national “procurement passport,” and create a single, unified portal for all procurement opportunities.

“The reforms proposed here are achievable, require no amendments to the CFTA, and are grounded in proven models,” note Manucha and Noss.

“Without action… Canada will entrench a fragmented, opaque system that weakens competition, limits opportunity, and drives higher spending at a time when Canadians can least afford it.”

To learn more, read the full paper here:

Ryan Manucha is a leading expert on interprovincial trade in Canada.

Joe Noss is the founder and CEO of Publicus, Canada’s fastest growing GovTech company focused on using AI to transform our country’s procurement system.

For further information, media are invited to contact:

Skander Belouizdad
Communications Officer
(613) 482-8327 x111
Skander.belouizdad@macdonaldlaurier.ca