Provincial Procurement Sources
What Cothon captures from SEAO, BC Bid, Ontario Tenders Portal, and municipal portals
Provincial Procurement Sources
Beyond federal CanadaBuys notices, Cothon collects tenders from three provincial systems and from BC and Ontario municipal portals. Each source publishes different data — this page describes what you can expect from each.
Coverage at a Glance
| Source | Jurisdiction | Notable data |
|---|---|---|
| SEAO | Québec — provincial, municipal, parapublic | Bilingual notices, UNSPSC classification, published bid results on past awards |
| BC Bid | British Columbia — provincial | BC's own commodity taxonomy, RFx documents |
| BC municipal portals | BC municipalities on bids&tenders | Plan takers, submitted bidders with bid values |
| Ontario Tenders Portal | Ontario — provincial | Provincial notices |
| Ontario municipal portals | Ontario municipalities on bids&tenders | Plan takers, submitted bidders with bid values |
Note
Federal coverage comes from CanadaBuys. There are no separate "PWGSC" or "Open Canada" sources — federal notices flow through CanadaBuys. Alberta, Saskatchewan, MERX, and the territories are not currently covered.
SEAO (Québec)
SEAO is Québec's electronic tendering system, covering provincial ministries, municipalities, and parapublic bodies.
- Language — notices are published in French; Cothon retains the bilingual fields, and its UNSPSC-aware search works across English and French terms.
- Classification — SEAO notices carry UNSPSC codes, which power the historical awards panel and value bands.
- Competitive data — Québec publishes bid results on past awards; on a saved opportunity, this feeds the Québec pricing intelligence (bidders, competitors, and the spread between submitted bids) in the Intelligence tab.
BC Bid (British Columbia)
BC Bid carries British Columbia provincial tenders.
- Commodities — BC classifies tenders with its own commodity taxonomy (main and other commodities) rather than UNSPSC; Cothon captures these from the notice.
- Documents — RFx documents on BC Bid are gated behind the portal's own download flow, so they appear on the detail page as links back to the source rather than stored files.
Ontario Tenders Portal
The Ontario Tenders Portal carries Ontario government notices, normalized into the same browser and detail view as every other source.
BC and Ontario Municipal Portals
Many BC and Ontario municipalities publish through bids&tenders platforms. These are the richest sources for competitive data:
- Plan takers — the list of companies that downloaded the bid documents, visible on the tender detail page while the tender is open. This is the likely competitive field before close.
- Bid results — after close, the submitted bidders and their bid values, straight from the source. See Tender Detail View.
Tip
For municipal work, check plan takers before deciding to bid — seeing who has pulled documents tells you the field you are up against.
Working Across Sources
All sources land in the same browser with the same filters. Useful patterns:
- Filter by province — region filtering includes each province's own source systems, so filtering to Québec covers SEAO, and filtering to BC or Ontario includes their municipal portals.
- Search bilingually — UNSPSC-aware search expansion bridges English and French, so one keyword reaches SEAO's French notices.
- Compare data availability — the detail page's Source coverage block shows exactly what each source published for a given tender.
Next Steps
- Browsing & Filtering — filtering by source and region
- Tender Detail View — plan takers, bid results, and coverage blocks
- Historical Awards — award history where UNSPSC codes exist
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