The Procurement Office is responsible for coordinating the purchase of goods and services for the Town. It manages the competitive bidding function and works collaboratively with the internal departments and vendors to ensure the Town purchases in a competitive and fair manner to achieve the best value for the Town.

Competitive Bids

The Town of East Gwillimbury welcomes competitive bids from vendors to provide high quality goods, services & construction contracting to ensure that Capital Projects and Operational requirements are met in a timely, efficient, and cost-effective manner. Competitive opportunities are advertised through the Town's Bids & Tenders website.

Digital Procurement (eBidding)

Digital Procurement (eBidding) at the Town began on June 11,2018 with the launch of the Town's Bids & Tenders Digital Procurement Website. The Procurement Office at the Town is now receiving all competitive bids through the Bids & Tenders system. This allows all vendors registered in the Bids & Tenders system to electronically submit tenders & proposals for any open competitions up to the time of the bid closing.

This has allowed for a wide based vendor source for all procured deliverables, increased numbers of competitive bids and proposals, greater efficiency in administering the bid process, a fully auditable system to ensure fairness, accountability and transparency in the bidding process. This powerful digital platform eliminated the need for vendors to submit paper bids and proposals by hand to the Town offices and greatly reduced the chance of making costly bid errors or having late deliveries which caused them to be disqualified from the bid opportunity. The Town can now share public procurement documents back and forth with many public entities who use the ‘Bids & Tenders' platform. York Region and all its nine local municipalities, along with hundreds of municipalities across Canada and the US are on this platform.

Procurement By-Law

The Town adheres to its Procurement By-law 2019-146 which was enacted by Council on December 3, 2019. The Procurement By-law has been developed to encourage competition among vendors, to obtain best value for the Town and to ensure fairness, objectivity, accountability, and transparency in the Procurement process. The By-law allows the Town to govern itself in an efficient responsible manner while being accountable for the Town's respective budgeted resources.

Professional Procurement Associations & Municipalities

The Town consults with other municipalities to take advantage of economies of scale and joint procurements to reduce administrative costs where appropriate and feasible. This is achieved through collaboration with many procurement organizations like York Purchasing Co-operative (YPC). The Town of East Gwillimbury is associated with all relevant procurement organizations in Canada including the Ontario Public Buyers Association (OPBA) and Supply Chain Canada (SCC) which are professional, not-for-profit associations representing procurement professionals throughout Canada and are recognized internationally. The Town continues to align itself with professional procurement organizations and develop secure and effective procurement processes through collaboration and developing best practices.

Ontario's Trade Commitments (Treaty Compliance)

The Town of East Gwillimbury complies with all of Ontario's Trade Commitments including national and international treaties that Canada has entered into, such as, the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), Canada Free Trade Agreement (CFTA) and all other relevant Provincial and Federal legislation.

York Purchasing Co-operative

Ontario Public Buyers Association

Supply Chain Canada

East Gwillimbury Bids & Tenders

Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement

Canada Free Trade Agreement