The Buy Canadian rule just changed. What the new $5M threshold means for you
The federal Buy Canadian threshold just dropped from $25 million to $5 million. As of June 15, any federal contract in that range now gives Canadian suppliers a real scoring advantage, a discount on bid price and extra points for Canadian content.
📰 News Insight
As of June 15, 2026, the federal Buy Canadian procurement rule expanded its reach dramatically. The threshold for "prioritize Canadian suppliers" dropped from $25 million contracts down to $5 million. Canadian suppliers get a 10% discount applied to their bid price during evaluation, plus extra points based on Canadian content offered. This now covers infrastructure, construction and transportation, and consumer and industrial goods and materials, which means safety and PPE supply contracts are explicitly in scope.
💡 What It Means for Industrial Safety Distributors
Any distributor bidding into, or supplying primes who bid into, federal contracts in the $5M to $25M range just became more attractive to buyers, but only if they can prove Canadian content fast. This isn't abstract policy, it's a live scoring mechanism now. A distributor stocking Canadian-manufactured PPE, fall protection, or safety equipment has a real, quantifiable edge on a bid evaluation starting this week. Distributors selling mostly imported product need to know this too, because their competitors are about to start advertising Canadian content as a differentiator, and silence on the topic reads as a weakness.
