A $120,518.57 Canada Border Services Agency contract in the federal government’s public contract register carries a signing date of Dec. 1, 2026, nearly two months after today and more than 11 months after the quarter in which it was reported.
The entry, filed under reference number C-2025-2026-Q3-908 in the proactive disclosure dataset on open.canada.ca, lists Real Time Networks Inc. as the vendor for safety and sanitation equipment and parts. The register shows one bid received and a delivery date of March 31, 2027.
The dates do not reconcile. The record’s reporting period is 2025-2026 Q3, which under the federal fiscal year (April 1 to March 31) ended Dec. 31, 2025. The same record gives a contract period start of Jan. 12, 2026, which would put the start of the work 10 months before the stated signing date. The register’s comments fields for the entry are blank.
The most likely explanation is a data-entry error, such as a wrong year typed into the date field. Nothing in the record suggests the vendor or the agency did anything improper, and the register does not say which date is wrong. Canada News Media found no other Real Time Networks contract in the dataset.
The entry is not alone. Canada News Media pulled the 1,000 most recently dated records from the dataset, which holds about 1.3 million contracts, and compared each record’s date with the quarter it was reported in. Four did not match.
A $35,932.58 software licence and maintenance contract at the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP is dated Sept. 26, 2026, but was reported in 2025-2026 Q4, a quarter that ended March 31, 2026. Its period start is Feb. 1, 2026. A $99,728.58 plumbing equipment contract at Public Services and Procurement Canada is dated July 6, 2026, a month after the 2026-2027 Q1 reporting period closed on June 30, and the work was to begin June 8.
The fourth, an advertising services contract at the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety, is dated July 10, 2026, also after the end of the Q1 period in which it was reported. It is listed at a value of $0.00, with a period start of April 1, 2026.
Some of the mismatches may have simple explanations. The Government of Canada says contracts over $10,000 can be published up to four to five months after award, and departments may revise records after the fact. A date entered when a record was updated, rather than when the contract was signed, would produce this kind of gap, though the register does not say so.
The register is the public’s main way to check how federal departments spend on goods and services, and it is used by journalists, researchers and vendors to compare awards across departments. Under the Directive on the Management of Procurement, departments are required to publish contracts worth more than $10,000, as well as amendments that change a contract’s value by more than that amount.
The review covered only the newest 1,000 records, so it does not show how common the problem is across the full dataset. It also cannot say which date in each record is the correct one. Canada News Media has not asked the departments involved to explain the entries. The figures in this report come from the open.canada.ca proactive disclosure of contracts dataset, retrieved on Oct. 8, 2026.
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Source: Government of Canada, Proactive Disclosure of Contracts, accessed Oct. 8, 2026.
