Assessing the Integration of Environmental Impact Considerations in Canadian Provincial Procurement Systems

Video Script

Hello, my name is Aasimah Hossain and I am going to tell you about my research on Environmental Impact and Canadian Provincial Public Procurement 

Public procurement is the use of public funds by governments and state-owned enterprises to purchase goods and services that align with public interests. Due to their substantial purchasing power, which in Canada, accounts for approximately 13% of the national GDP, governments can not only leverage this to minimize their footprint, but also create a market for sustainable goods and services, and drive innovation in the private sector. This practice of making purchasing decisions based on the environmental impact of a good or service throughout its lifecycle as opposed to alternatives that offer the same primary function is known as green public procurement.

Although there has been a surge in research to understand the benefits and drawbacks of implementing green public procurement in various countries and cities, there is a gap in the literature when it comes to understanding it's use by Canadian provinces.

This research aims to investigate whether provincial bid documents are designed to derive a reduction in environmental impact through impact-reducing procurement decisions. To understand this, I assessed 206 bid documents from British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec focused on procuring from the information technology and real property sectors.  

I was specifically looking for where environmental impacts were mentioned in the document, if at all, and how environmental impact considerations were being scored in the evaluation section. This is crucial because purchasing decisions are based on the results of these evaluations.

What I found is that environmental impacts are being mentioned in many of the bid documents and provinces such as British Columbia and Quebec have green procurement strategies and guidelines.  Yet, when it comes to scoring environmental impact in the evaluation, they were either not scored at all or weighted much lower relative to other criteria such as price. This suggests that even if there is awareness of environmental impacts and existing guidelines and strategies for green procurement provided at the provincial level, these are not necessarily being translated into actions and implemented by ministries. 

I also found that the real property sector appeared to evaluate environmental impact more than IT across all 4 provinces and this was due to the use of regulations such as the Environmental Assessment Act and certifications such as LEED.  In many cases, these were used to communicate the ministry’s environmental objectives to the tender and measure the environmental impact of goods and services. 

To conclude, the provinces assessed demonstrated a general awareness of environmental impacts through procurement.  However, there is a lack of cohesion between initiatives at the provincial level and how these are implemented by ministries.  It should also be noted that regulations and certifications are effective in streamlining the integration of measurable environmental impact considerations in bid evaluations. 

I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Shashi Kant for his incredible guidance and support throughout the whole research process and to UofT for making access to all the documents needed for this research possible.

Thank you for listening to my presentation.