The Government of Canada’s existing standing offers for public opinion research services will expire on September 30, 2021 and the Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) and its Public Opinion Research Directorate (PORD) are currently working on new procurement tools.

The PSPC has asked for industry feedback on the following topics: pricing structure by method, for various incidence rates of the target population or for specialised target populations; security clearance on POR projects when required; web accessibility of final deliverables; social procurement and aboriginal business set-aside.

The PSPC has also released a draft of proposed revisions to its quantitative public opinion research standards that will form part of its new procurement process.

The proposed revisions include changes including: data collection via mobile devices; multi-mode surveys; the statistical treatment of probability samples versus non-probability sample; privacy and data security; survey accessibility; and ways for respondents to verify the legitimacy of a survey as a GC research initiative.