Quebec court rejects construction-licence condition in Saint-Alexis snow-clearing tender

A snow-clearing contractor has won its appeal against the rejection of its $450,000 bid in Saint-Alexis, Quebec, after the province’s appeal court ruled that the municipality could not require a construction licence for work that did not need one.

In Transport Martin Forget inc. c. Municipalité de Saint-Alexis, 2026 QCCA 1254, decided September 23, 2026, the Quebec Court of Appeal declared the company’s bid compliant and said the 2019–2022 snow-clearing and abrasive-spreading contract should have gone to it.

The court did not award the $300,000 the contractor sought. It sent the case back to the Superior Court to decide damages and causation, leaving both the existence of compensable loss and its amount for the next stage. Legal costs were awarded at both levels, without a specified amount.

The lowest bid was rejected over a licence

Saint-Alexis issued its tender in May 2019 for clearing snow and spreading abrasives on municipal streets, roads and sidewalks. The tender required bidders to provide their file number with the Régie du bâtiment du Québec, or RBQ, and certify that their file was in good standing.

Transport Martin Forget submitted the lowest price: $450,000. The two other bids were $599,516.16 and $678,600.

But the company’s paperwork was inaccurate. Its representative certified that it held an RBQ licence and supplied a number, although it no longer had a current licence. He testified that the company had previously held one but chose not to pay the $1,000 renewal fee because the snow-clearing work did not legally require it and there was no certainty of winning the contract.

When the municipality checked, it found that the supplied licence number was not valid and the company had no licence in good standing. It rejected the bid as non-compliant and awarded the contract to Les Entreprises Bourget, whose bid was almost $150,000 higher.

The contractor sued in November 2019. The proceeding was split into stages, with the first addressing bid compliance and the municipality’s responsibility. In June 2024, the Superior Court dismissed the claim.

A tender condition must have a valid connection to the work

The parties agreed that no legislation required an RBQ licence to carry out the snow-clearing and abrasive-spreading work. The lower court nevertheless accepted the condition as a way to assess bidders’ professionalism, organization and credibility.

The Court of Appeal found that analysis mistaken. Municipalities may set eligibility requirements, but their power is not unlimited. A condition cannot exclude potentially qualified bidders without valid justification. Procurement rules must serve the public interest while preserving fair competition and equal access to public contracts.

RBQ licences concern construction work. Their qualification requirements assess matters such as construction-business management and the execution of construction projects. The evidence included RBQ information expressly identifying road and sidewalk snow removal, de-icing and abrasive spreading as work not requiring a licence.

Requiring that licence could discourage capable snow-clearing businesses that did no construction work from bidding. The court said this imposed an unnecessary burden and disrupted equality among potential competitors. It was not necessary to prove that the municipality intended to exclude them; the effect of the condition mattered.

The municipality later removed the licence requirement from its 2022 tender. Evidence described other safeguards in that tender, including a higher performance bond and additional contractual penalties.

The appeal court also distinguished the construction case on which the lower court had relied. That earlier case involved building work for which an RBQ licence was actually required. It did not justify imposing the same requirement on this snow-clearing contract.

Because the licence condition was invalid, the court did not need to decide whether the company’s failure to satisfy it was a major or minor irregularity, or whether the municipality reasonably exercised discretion over a minor defect.

Not complaining first did not automatically defeat the lawsuit

The appeal also addressed a separate reason the lower court had dismissed the claim: Transport Martin Forget had not used the municipal procurement complaint process before submitting its bid.

That mechanism came into force on May 25, 2019, while this tender was open. It allowed interested bidders to challenge conditions that prevented qualified competitors from participating or otherwise undermined fair treatment.

The lower court treated failure to complain as a bar to the subsequent damages claim. The appeal court found no such automatic bar in the Municipal Code, the legislation governing the Autorité des marchés publics or the municipality’s complaint form.

The tender also lacked an express clause requiring bidders to report contradictions, errors or omissions to a designated contact.

The court explained that the complaint system sought transparency and healthy competition, not immunity for small municipalities from later lawsuits. In the municipal setting discussed in the reasons, the procurement authority could make recommendations but could not award the financial compensation sought by the contractor.

There was also an important difference between this lawsuit and judicial review. Transport Martin Forget was seeking damages for alleged lost profits, not an order cancelling the tender decision or forcing the municipality to hand over the contract. The requirement to exhaust other remedies in judicial-review proceedings did not dispose of this civil damages action.

Compensation remains to be decided

The court limited its declaration to bid compliance and the conclusion that the contract should have been awarded to Transport Martin Forget. It declined to declare that the municipality’s refusal had caused damages.

Whether failing to complain affected the causal connection between the municipality’s conduct and the claimed loss remains part of the second stage. The ruling therefore does not mean procurement complaints are always irrelevant to damages, nor does the difference between the bids become an automatic compensation award.

The parties were returned to the Superior Court for those remaining questions.