The 2026 Guide
Index

What a good contract looks like

When a supplier builds or runs your service, or when you contract a team to build one, the contract is where the promises live. The rest of the playbook keeps telling you to put things in the contract. This page puts them all in one place and shows them as a real contract would look, for our example service, the grant portal.

This is a tour of a sample contract. It is not a legal template, and it does not set the rules. The rules that govern federal contracts sit with PSPC, the Directive on the Management of Procurement, and CanadaBuys. For how to run the buying itself, see the Procurement thread. This page is only about what a good agreement should contain.

How to read this contract

A real contract is built from parts. There is a short main agreement, the Articles of Agreement, and then the detail is attached at the back in numbered sections called schedules (a contract word, some lawyers say annexes or appendices). We use the contract's own words here so the page reads like the real thing you would sign. It is shortened and plain, but laid out the way a real one is.

Some schedules are in almost every service contract, the standard backbone: the statement of work, the price, the service levels, and how the supplier hands the service back at the end. Others are added to fit the particular service. The grant portal holds people's personal and financial information, so it carries schedules for security, privacy, accessibility, the parts it is built from, and the data it keeps.

So each schedule below carries a tag: Standard, in every contract means it is conventional, in nearly every service contract; Added for this service means we wrote it in because of what the grant portal is and the information it holds.

The contract

Contract for the grant portal

This Agreement is between His Majesty the King in right of Canada, represented by the department (Canada), and the Supplier.

Articles of Agreement

  1. 1.The work. The Supplier shall deliver and operate the grant portal, the online service people use to apply for and manage grants and contributions, as set out in Schedule A.
  2. 2.Term. This Agreement runs for three years from the start date, with two optional one-year extensions at Canada's choice.
  3. 3.Price. Canada shall pay the Supplier as set out in Schedule B.
  4. 4.The Supplier's obligations. The Supplier shall meet the requirements in Schedules C through I.
  5. 5.Oversight. Canada may verify the Supplier's compliance with this Agreement at any time, and the Supplier shall give Canada the access and evidence needed to do so.
  6. 6.Order of precedence. If a Schedule conflicts with these Articles, the Articles prevail.

The Schedules attached form part of this Agreement.

The schedules

What the supplier is hired to build and run.

  1. A.1The Supplier shall design, build, and operate the grant portal so an applicant can create an account, apply for a grant, upload documents, and track a decision.
  2. A.2The Supplier shall meet the delivery dates set out in this Schedule.
  3. A.3The Supplier shall provide the people and skills needed to run the service for the Term.
  4. A.4Canada may add work not named in this Schedule by issuing a task authorization: a written description of the task, priced at the rates in Schedule B, approved before the work starts. Every task must fall within the scope of this Agreement.

every contract names the work it is buying (the General Conditions of a Service Contract). A.4 leaves room for the work nobody can name yet: PSPC signs contracts with task authorizations when there is a definite need for services but the exact tasks and their timing will only be known while the contract runs. New features in Live usually arrive this way, priced task by task instead of through a new procurement. More on this: statement of requirement vs statement of work.

Assumptions this page makes

You are already working to the Government of Canada Digital Standards, design with users, iterate and improve frequently, work in the open, use open standards, address security and privacy, build in accessibility, empower staff, be good data stewards, design ethical services, and collaborate widely, and to the law on privacy, security, official languages, and accessibility. The standards say how the government works in the digital world. The six Government of Canada digital competencies say what every public servant has to be able to do to work that way, and the team page covers them. This guide builds on those.