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Government Procurement

Background

Foreign government procurement markets are worth hundreds of billions of dollars annually and offer significant potential opportunities for Canadian exporters. Governments, suppliers, and taxpayers have all benefitted from the efforts to open government procurement markets. Government procurement agreements help to ensure that Canadian suppliers of goods and services are treated in an open, transparent and nondiscriminatory manner when they sell to governments outside of Canada.

Canada is working on a number of fronts to improve and secure government procurement market access for Canadian suppliers. The WTO Agreement on Government Procurement is the primary plurilateral instrument guaranteeing access for Canadian suppliers to a number of important government procurement markets. The North American Free Trade Agreement Chapter 10 and recently negotiated procurement chapters in free trade agreements with Chile and Peru, along with other ongoing bilateral and regional negotiations, offer other important opportunities for Canadian suppliers.

On February 12, 2010, Canada and the United States signed an agreement that will allow Canadian companies to participate in U.S. infrastructure projects financed under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
The Canada-U.S. Agreement on Government Procurement has three parts:

provincial and territorial procurement commitments under the WTO Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA) for all provinces and territories (except Nunavut) in exchange for U.S. sub-federal GPA commitments;
temporary Canadian procurement commitments for construction projects for some provincial/territorial agencies not included in the GPA and a significant number of municipalities in exchange for the U.S. exempting Canada from the Buy American provisions of the Recovery Act for 7 programs of interest that receive funding from Recovery Act; and
a commitment to explore the scope for a long term government procurement agreement between Canada and the U.S., within the next 12 months, to deepen on a reciprocal basis, procurement commitments beyond those in the WTO GPA and NAFTA.