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Median contract value
The middle award in the compiled corpus is worth $36,529 — n=2,169,434 records, $1K–$5M band, query published.
What this measures
The middle award in the compiled corpus is worth $36,529. Half of the 2,169,434 award records in the measurable band are smaller, half larger. Canadian public procurement is a market of many small wins, not a few giant ones — the number that matters to a supplier deciding whether to bid.
Methodology
Population: every compiled award record with a stated value in Canadian dollars, across federal, provincial, and municipal sources, normalized into a single award table. The headline uses a $1,000–$5,000,000 band: below $1K, records are mostly line items and data artifacts; above $5M, consolidated buys and multi-year programs distort the middle. The unfiltered median over all 2,437,733 valued records is $30,779 — published alongside so both are citable.
Reproducibility: SELECT value_cad FROM awards_unified WHERE value_cad BETWEEN 1000 AND 5000000 ORDER BY value_cad LIMIT 1 OFFSET (SELECT COUNT(*)/2 FROM awards_unified WHERE value_cad BETWEEN 1000 AND 5000000) → 36529.0 (middle pair 36,528.94 / 36,529.00; n=2,169,434). Verified 2026-10-04.
Frequently asked questions
What is the median contract value in the corpus?
$36,529, measured across 2,169,434 compiled award records with a stated value between $1,000 and $5,000,000.
Why exclude contracts under $1,000 and over $5,000,000?
Sub-$1,000 records are mostly line items and data artifacts, not procurement a business can pursue; above $5M, consolidated buys and multi-year programs distort the middle of the distribution. The $1K–$5M band is the range a typical supplier can actually bid. Both exclusions are stated so the figure is reproducible.
What is the median without any filter?
$30,779 across all 2,437,733 award records with a stated value. We publish the band median as the headline because it describes procurable work; the unfiltered figure is here for transparency.
Which jurisdictions does this cover?
The compiled multi-jurisdiction award lake: federal, provincial, and municipal award records normalized into a single table. It is not a federal-only statistic.
Public Service Index (October 2026). Median contract value. Release 2026.10. https://publicserviceindex.org/stats/median-contract-value