Quebec is slow to make green purchases

Sustainable development criteria are still rare in public calls for tenders in Quebec. The innovation of businesses here is suffering, deplores one of them, impatient to see the announced changes bear fruit.

His ecological noise barriers produced in Quebec are bought by private organizations, but Ramo struggles to sell them to public bodies.

The Saint-Roch-de-l’Achigan company, like many others, is coming up against public calls for tenders in Quebec, which are slow to make room for sustainable solutions.

Public bodies have “noble intentions” and “pay dearly” to design eco-responsible projects, but still rely on performance and price criteria during calls for tenders, deplores engineer Benjamin Walczak, partner and director of Ramo’s green screen division.

Faced with products whose environmental costs are not accounted for, ecological options have little chance of success in current tenders, he explains.

Many Quebec companies are making the same observation, particularly in the field of construction, says lawyer and law professor at the University of Sherbrooke Geneviève Dufour, a specialist in the matter.

“Fair speeches” are meaningless if “the government itself doesn’t buy what’s most environmentally friendly”, she says, pointing out that public procurement accounts for 12% of the gross domestic product (GDP) of Province.

Inaccessible public contracts

Ramo’s noise barriers, for example, appeared in 2017 in a computer-generated image presenting a possible option for a section of the Metropolitan Express Network (REM), in the Laval-sur-le-Lac sector, but they were ultimately not retained in the final project.

Another option with another product was preferred to them by the NouvLR consortium, in charge of the construction of the project following a call for tenders, for questions of uniformity, architectural treatment, lifespan and performance. , explained to The Press Emmanuelle Rouillard-Moreau, spokesperson for CDPQ Infra, the subsidiary of the Caisse de depot et placement du Québec which is piloting the REM project.

“There were no environmental criteria” in the call for tenders, laments Benjamin Walczak, who believes that the product selected, made of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), a material produced from petroleum, is “the most low end” in the market.

Ramo also saw a contract escape him in Deux-Montagnes, along Highway 640, where a PVC noise barrier was also chosen, says Mr. Walczak.

Ramo therefore sells its noise barriers mainly in the private sector, which has “more latitude” in awarding contracts, notes Mr. Walczak.

The slowness of the public contract market to go green is hampering innovation, believe M^e Dufour and M. Walczak.

In countries where public calls for tenders include sustainable development criteria, “the entire market is being restructured”, observes Ms.^e From the oven.

The desire to do better is being felt, but change is coming very slowly, says Benjamin Walczak.

Support required

Quebec amended in 2022 the Public Bodies Contracts Actwhich guides procurement methods, to oblige public buyers to include at least one sustainable development provision, explains Geneviève Dufour, whose proposed changes to various articles have been included in the text.

These changes are a good thing, also believes Mr. Walczak, “but we still need to equip ourselves with the tools to apply them,” he says.

This is also the recipe for success of the “world champions” that are the Netherlands and South Korea, which have designed tools such as software that integrate ecological criteria for calls for tenders, explains M^e From the oven.

“Buyers find it complicated, we have to support them, we have to simplify things,” she believes, stressing that public procurement managers cannot be experts in sustainable development and “know everything”.