Fairness Monitoring Program

When Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) runs a high-stakes procurement—think complex IT systems or major construction projects—someone independent watches over the process to ensure it's fair to all bidders. That's the Fairness Monitoring Program. It provides independent oversight on procurements that carry significant complexity, risk, or political sensitivity, giving suppliers, client departments, and Canadians assurance that the process isn't rigged.

How It Works

Here's the thing: there's no government-wide legislation mandating fairness monitoring. The program operates under PSPC's departmental Policy on Fairness Monitoring, which was revised in 2012 to introduce clear definitions of fairness, openness, and transparency alongside risk-based criteria. Under this policy, every procurement requiring ministerial or Treasury Board approval must go through an assessment to determine whether a fairness monitor is needed—with exceptions for non-competitive procurements and amendments to existing contracts.

The assessment uses specific triggers. If your procurement hits complexity level 4 or 5 on the Project Complexity and Risk Assessment Tool, you're getting a monitor. Same goes if the risk assessment comes back medium-high or high. In practice, this means major IT procurements through Shared Services Canada, defence acquisitions at DND, and large infrastructure projects routinely fall under monitoring. The fairness monitor—an independent third party—observes the process from solicitation through award, identifying issues in real time and recommending corrective action.

The numbers are telling. Since the program's inception through the 2019-2020 evaluation period, monitors identified and resolved over 300 fairness issues. Yet the cost remains negligible at just 0.01% relative to the value of monitored procurements. That's a small insurance premium for processes that can run into hundreds of millions of dollars and attract intense scrutiny from unsuccessful bidders and the media alike.

Key Considerations

• The assessment itself is mandatory for high-value procurements, but appointing a monitor isn't automatic. Don't assume every Treasury Board submission gets one—the recommendation depends on complexity and risk factors specific to your procurement.

• Fairness monitors observe; they don't manage your process. They're not there to make procurement decisions or delay timelines unnecessarily, but they will flag issues with evaluation criteria, bidder communications, or conflict of interest situations that could compromise the process.

• The Federal Accountability Act heightened expectations around procurement transparency, even though it didn't specifically mandate fairness monitoring. The program evolved to meet those expectations, so you'll find it's now embedded in the culture of major procurements regardless of strict legal requirements.

• Client departments sometimes push back on fairness monitoring as bureaucratic overhead. The catch is that the 2019-2020 evaluation found it actually prevents bigger problems. Issues caught during the process are far cheaper to fix than protests, litigation, or reputational damage after award.

Related Terms

Fairness Monitoring Coverage Assessment and Recommendation Form, Project Complexity and Risk Assessment, Treasury Board Submission

Sources

• Fairness Monitoring Program - Public Services and Procurement Canada

• Evaluation of the Fairness Monitoring Program - PSPC

• Report 1—Procuring Complex Information Technology Solutions - Office of the Auditor General

If you're planning a complex procurement that might need ministerial or Treasury Board approval, factor the fairness assessment into your timeline early. It's easier to build monitoring into your process from the start than to retrofit it later when questions arise.