Federal departments flagged just two contracts as minister’s office contracts anywhere in the Government of Canada so far in 2026, according to the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat’s proactive publication of contracts register, and a review of the full history of that field suggests the number reflects a reporting problem rather than ministerial restraint.
The register, searchable at search.open.canada.ca, holds more than 1.17 million contract records covering awards over $10,000. Of those, 102 in total carry the “Minister’s Office Contracts” flag set to yes. The annual counts are 12 in 2019, 10 in 2020, 30 in 2021 and 26 in 2022, then 7 in 2023, 5 in 2024, 8 in 2025 and 2 so far in 2026, a year whose data currently runs only to July. Total contract volume did not fall over that stretch. The register logged 69,854 records in 2021, 75,385 in 2022, 75,205 in 2023, 70,392 in 2024 and 73,735 in 2025.
The drop is not a case of departments leaving the box blank. In 2026 alone, departments recorded an explicit “no” on that field 36,757 times against two “yes” answers. Departments are answering the question. They are answering no.
What the 102 flagged records actually contain raises a second problem. Nine of them belong to Elections Canada, an agency that has no minister. All nine are investigative services call-ups dated May 6, 2021, and each carries the same note in the register: “This contract was awarded on behalf of the Commissioner of Canada Elections.” The three largest are $387,695.70 to Makwa Resourcing, $279,389.25 to Nicholas Alexander and $227,650.50 to John Dickson Professional Corp. The Commissioner of Canada Elections is the independent officer responsible for enforcing the Canada Elections Act, and Elections Canada is an independent agency whose Chief Electoral Officer reports directly to Parliament rather than to a cabinet minister.
Other flagged entries sit with bodies that likewise have no minister’s office of their own, including 13 at the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada, six at the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency, one at the Canadian Human Rights Commission and one at Library and Archives Canada. The largest single flagged record in the register is a $1,627,228.77 standing offer with Altis Recruitment and Technology Inc., dated April 24, 2026 and held by Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, described in the register as access to information and privacy consulting services.
At the same time, departments that unambiguously do have ministers’ offices report almost nothing. Employment and Social Development Canada accounts for 31 of the 102, close to a third of every flagged contract in the register’s history. National Defence records one. Health Canada, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, Indigenous Services Canada, the Canada Revenue Agency, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and Natural Resources Canada record none at all, though all of them file contracts to the same register.
The data schema published by the Treasury Board Secretariat lists the field’s reporting obligation as “conditional” and states that “it is recommended that this field indicate whether the transaction is for the Minister’s office.” The same schema defines ministers’ offices contracts as any contracts for goods and services entered into by a minister or their exempt staff, chargeable to a minister’s other operating budget or to a parliamentary secretary’s assistant budget under the Policies for Ministers’ Offices.
One further pattern is visible in the flagged records. Of the 102, 61 were awarded non-competitively, about 60 per cent. Across the register as a whole, non-competitive awards accounted for 23,599 of 73,735 contracts in 2025 and 11,942 of 36,759 contracts in 2026, roughly 32 per cent in both years.
The register carries a standing caution that its data is unaudited and is supplied by the reporting departments themselves. On this field, that caveat is doing considerable work. Anyone trying to use the register to answer a basic accountability question, namely what ministers’ offices bought and from whom, cannot answer it from these records.
