CanadaBuys vs MERX: What Changed and Where to Find Federal Tenders Now

For about 25 years, if you wanted to bid on a federal government contract in Canada, you went to MERX. It was the official portal run under contract with the federal government, operated by Mediagrif Interactive (later Notarius). It charged vendors an annual subscription fee to access tenders. It had market share by default because it was the only place federal buyers were required to post.

That changed in 2022. PSPC launched CanadaBuys as the new official federal tender portal, free for everyone. MERX lost its federal contract. If you haven't revisited your procurement monitoring setup since then, this article is for you.

What MERX was

MERX launched in the late 1990s as the federal government's outsourced solution to publishing tender notices. Vendors paid annual subscriptions, typically in the range of a few hundred dollars, for full access. The model worked because the government mandated it: federal departments had to post on MERX, so vendors had no choice but to subscribe.

At its peak, MERX covered federal tenders, a number of provincial and municipal postings, and had become the default starting point for any Canadian company pursuing government work. "Check MERX" was standard advice in any business development context.

What CanadaBuys is

CanadaBuys (canadabuys.canada.ca) is PSPC's own platform, built and operated by the federal government. It replaced MERX as the mandatory posting location for federal tenders starting in 2022. It is free to use, requires no subscription, and is the authoritative source for federal procurement notices from departments across the Government of Canada.

CanadaBuys covers the full range of federal procurement activity: Requests for Proposal, Requests for Quotation, Advance Contract Award Notices, and standing offer solicitations. The underlying data is also published on the open.canada.ca open data portal, which is how tools like ProcureData access it programmatically.

What MERX still does

MERX hasn't shut down. It still operates at merx.com and still publishes tenders, but its scope has changed significantly. Today, MERX primarily serves non-federal buyers: Crown corporations, utilities, broader public sector organizations, and some provincial and municipal entities that choose to post there. A number of private-sector buyers also use it to manage their own procurement processes.

MERX is no longer a reliable source for federal government tenders. If a federal department posts a tender, it goes to CanadaBuys. It may or may not also appear on MERX depending on whether the buyer has a separate arrangement, but you cannot count on it.

Feature	CanadaBuys	MERX
Official federal portal	Yes (since 2022)	No (pre-2022)
Free access	Yes	Partial (some content paywalled)
Federal department tenders	Complete	Incomplete
Crown corps & broader public sector	Some	Some
Open data / API access	Yes (open.canada.ca)	No

The coverage gap neither portal fills

Even with CanadaBuys fully covering the federal government, that's still only one layer of Canadian public procurement. Provincial, municipal, and international buyers represent a large share of total contract volume, and none of it appears on CanadaBuys.

A company bidding on IT services, construction, consulting, or professional services needs to watch multiple jurisdictions simultaneously. Quebec SEAO covers provincial and municipal tenders in Quebec. British Columbia, Nova Scotia, and Saskatchewan each run their own portals. Toronto, Montreal, and Gatineau post independently. Keeping up means monitoring every level of Canadian government at once.

Managing alerts across eight or nine separate portals is the operational reality for most business development teams today. It's why consolidated feeds exist.

Where ProcureData fits

ProcureData aggregates tender data from CanadaBuys, Quebec SEAO, provincial portals (Nova Scotia, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Yukon), and municipal portals (Toronto, Montreal, Gatineau). All of it is normalized into a single schema and available through a consistent search interface or API.

The practical benefit is that you're not maintaining separate logins and alert configurations across a dozen sites. You query one place and get coverage across jurisdictions. See the full source list on the coverage page.

Bottom line for vendors

If your BD workflow still routes through MERX as the primary federal source, update it. CanadaBuys is where federal tenders live now. MERX still has value for some non-federal buyers, but it's no longer the place to start when chasing federal work.

Beyond federal, the picture is fragmented. No single government portal covers the full Canadian landscape. If your firm competes across jurisdictions, a consolidated data source saves significant time versus checking individual portals manually.