Public construction tenders in Canada: the July 2026 board, by the numbers
A dated snapshot of Canada's open public construction market - open tender counts by province and by trade across Alberta, Ontario, B.C., and Saskatchewan, how fast new work is posting, and what the July rhythm means for your bid calendar.
By Joseph Morrison · Founder, Cornerstone Contracts
Most writing about the construction market talks in billions - budgets, programs, announcements. Useful for headlines, useless for a Tuesday morning bid decision. What an estimator actually needs is simpler: how much public work is out to bid right now, where, and in which trades.
We track that every day. Here is the board as of July 10, 2026 - a dated snapshot, with the live version always free at cornerstonecontracts.com/tenders.
The board by province
Open public construction tenders in the four provinces we score matches in:
| Province | Open tenders (July 10, 2026) | |---|---| | Alberta | 748 | | Ontario | 525 | | British Columbia | 416 | | Saskatchewan | 321 | | Total | 2,010 |
A few things behind those numbers:
- Alberta leads outright, not just per capita. Provincial highway and infrastructure programs, two large cities procuring continuously, and the MASH sector (municipalities, academic institutions, schools, health) all posting through the Alberta Purchasing Connection keep the AB board the deepest in the country.
- Ontario's number understates the market's size - much Ontario work moves through buyer-specific portals and invitation-based prequalification pools, so the open-tender board is the public slice of a bigger pie.
- B.C.'s inventory arrives via MERX, Biddingo, and CanadaBuys. If you only watch one B.C. source, you are seeing a fraction of it. Our B.C. public bidding guide covers the landscape.
- Saskatchewan punches far above its weight per capita, driven by highways, Crown corporation capital work, and municipal water programs, almost all of it through a single portal. See SaskTenders vs MERX vs CanadaBuys.
The board by trade
Open tenders by primary trade classification, across all provinces in the feed:
| Trade | Open tenders (July 10, 2026) | |---|---| | Electrical | 165 | | Paving | 137 | | Mechanical | 134 | | Underground utilities | 116 | | Civil | 100 | | Bridge | 84 | | Concrete | 66 | | Roofing | 53 |
These eight are the top of the list, not the whole list - the feed classifies dozens of trades, from demolition to traffic control. Two patterns worth noting in July: paving and underground utilities are at seasonal peak (the summer construction window compresses this work into a few months of postings), and electrical is the deepest single trade board - substations, building systems, traffic signals, and treatment-plant controls post year-round from every level of government. Browse your own trade's live board at /for.
Velocity: the number that changes behaviour
In the seven days ending July 10, 578 new public tenders posted across the four provinces. That is roughly eighty a day, every day, including the quiet ones.
Set that against the other clock: the median open tender in our feed closes in under three weeks. Put the two together and the conclusion is mechanical - a contractor who checks portals monthly sees only a fraction of what posted, and has already lost most of the bid window on what remains. The math does not reward more discipline; it rewards consolidation. One feed, checked briefly, daily, beats twelve portals checked heroically, monthly.
The July rhythm, honestly
The board is not a straight line. It dipped through Canada Day week - a wave of June-posted tenders hit their closing dates faster than new work posted over the holiday - and has been rebuilding since. That is a normal early-July pattern, worth knowing for two reasons: a thin week is not a slowing market, and the late-July board tends to refill as buyers push out the work they want closed before September.
If you are planning your bid calendar: the work is here now, the paving and civil season is at full depth, and the fall institutional cycle (schools, health, universities) starts posting in weeks, not months.
How to use a board like this
Volume without filtering is just a longer to-do list. The discipline that makes 2,010 open tenders useful instead of paralyzing:
- Trade fit first - only work your shop self-performs. Our go/no-go framework is the two-minute version.
- Geography second - if mobilization eats the margin, it is someone else's job.
- Capacity third - bonding, insurance, and schedule alongside your current book.
Three yeses, then commit fully. Anything less, close the PDF and spend the hour on a bid you can win - there are, verifiably, plenty more where it came from.
See the live board
Every number above is a snapshot; the live counts are free to browse, no account: open tenders by province and by trade. When you want the filtering done for you - every posting scored against your trade, region, and capacity, with a drafted proposal for the ones worth chasing - start free.
Counts are point-in-time from the Cornerstone feed (postings with a closing date still ahead, aggregated from CanadaBuys, MERX, Biddingo, the Alberta Purchasing Connection, SaskTenders, and municipal portals) and move daily. Verify anything time-sensitive against the live pages and the official source each posting links to.