Eligible Suppliers

In Canadian public procurement, eligible suppliers are the suppliers that meet the conditions to participate in a particular procurement. Those conditions can include the required capability, a completed qualification stage, a security level, or the ability to offer Canadian goods or services.

The term does not carry one fixed meaning across government. Each buyer, policy or process sets its own test for who counts as eligible. The sections below cover the main places where Canadian buyers use the term, so bid teams can read an eligibility condition correctly when it appears in a solicitation.

Eligible suppliers under the Canadian Content Policy

Under the Canadian Content Policy, eligible suppliers are suppliers offering Canadian goods or services that could potentially meet the requirement. Buyers use this count to decide how wide to open a solicitation. The CanadaBuys key considerations for preparing solicitation offers set out the decision rule.

• If the buyer believes at least two eligible suppliers exist, the solicitation or request for a standing offer may be limited to Canadian suppliers.
• If the number of eligible suppliers is uncertain, the solicitation may be conditionally limited.
• If fewer than two eligible suppliers exist, the solicitation is opened to all suppliers.

Eligible suppliers in defence procurements

In defence procurements, the term identifies suppliers or supplier teams that passed an earlier qualification or engagement stage and can receive or submit a later request for proposals. Canada has used invitation-to-qualify processes to build lists of qualified suppliers that demonstrated they could meet its needs, and those suppliers moved into later phases. One example is described in the PSPC briefing on defence and marine procurement.

The future fighter competition shows the pattern clearly. Canada identified five eligible government-led supplier teams: France with Dassault, Sweden with SAAB, the United Kingdom with Airbus, and the United States with Boeing and with Lockheed Martin, as listed in the Department of National Defence procurement disclosure. PSPC then released the request for proposals to eligible suppliers on July 23, 2019, according to the PSPC announcement on the next step in the competition.

Eligibility also carried obligations. Future fighter eligible suppliers were required to submit economic-benefits proposals describing planned investments in Canadian industry, as noted in the Department of National Defence procurement briefing of March 2022.

Eligible suppliers in ProServices directed contracts

In ProServices, eligible suppliers are pre-qualified suppliers identified through the Centralized Professional Services System ePortal. For a directed contract below $40,000, the contracting authority must search the ePortal to identify eligible suppliers for the specific category, security level and other requirement-specific criteria. The authority may then approach an eligible supplier from the search results. The process is described in the PSPC guidance on directed contracts.

Eligible suppliers in Advance Contract Award Notices

An Advance Contract Award Notice (ACAN) can also use the term for a supplier considered capable of meeting a narrowly defined requirement. One CanadaBuys ACAN named Fort Defiance Industries as the only known eligible supplier able to provide a steam-field sterilizer for deployed operations. In this setting, the term describes the buyer's view of who can meet the need.

What eligible suppliers means for your bids

Read the eligibility condition in each solicitation before you invest in a response. Depending on the procurement, you may need to demonstrate technical capability, complete a qualification process, hold the right category and security level in ProServices, offer Canadian goods or services, or submit required proposal and economic-benefits information.

Suppliers that are not yet on a qualified list or in the ePortal cannot be approached through those channels. When you see an ACAN, check whether your product meets the stated requirement and respond within the notice period if it does.