The State of the Global Climate 2023

The report analyzes the legal framework of Canada's public procurement in the context of international trade agreements, specifically the WTO GPA and CETA. It argues that while these agreements prohibit origin-based discrimination, they provide significant flexibility for incorporating environmental, social, and socioeconomic criteria through performance-based specifications and life-cycle costing. The author concludes that international trade obligations are not a barrier to sustainable procurement and recommends a comprehensive 'Procurement Package' to professionalize the procurement workforce and develop national life-cycle assessment databases to better support clean tech SMEs and climate goals.

• Canada's procurement commitments under CETA are more extensive than those under the WTO GPA, covering more central government entities and a wider range of subnational entities, including most municipal governments and publicly funded health and social-service entities.
• The non-discrimination principle in the WTO GPA and CETA prohibits discrimination based on the origin of products or suppliers ('buying local'), but it does not prohibit preferences for green or social criteria, provided they are not used to implicitly favor local suppliers.
• The WTO GPA explicitly allows the use of technical specifications to protect the environment or promote the conservation of natural resources, and encourages the use of performance-based or functional requirements over descriptive characteristics.
• International trade rules allow contracts to be awarded based on the 'most advantageous tender' rather than the lowest price, which enables the use of life-cycle costing to achieve better value for money and lower environmental impacts.
• SMEs in the Canadian clean tech sector face barriers to public procurement not due to trade agreements, but because of bureaucratic processes and slow payment cycles.

APA

International Institute for Sustainable Development (2023). The State of the Global Climate 2023. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/canada-international-trade-spp.pdf

Chicago

International Institute for Sustainable Development. The State of the Global Climate 2023. 2023. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/canada-international-trade-spp.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=International Institute for Sustainable Development |title=The State of the Global Climate 2023 |date=2023 |url=https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/canada-international-trade-spp.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{internationalinstituteforsustainabledevelopment2023state, author = {{International Institute for Sustainable Development}}, title = {{The State of the Global Climate 2023}}, institution = {International Institute for Sustainable Development}, year = {2023}, url = {https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/canada-international-trade-spp.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }