Trade and Procurement
Full CPTPP access opens Canadian public contracts to UK suppliers
By Staff Writer | 1 September 2026
Canada was the last member to ratify the UK's accession, and from today the procurement chapter reaches contracts that earlier agreements between the two countries left out.
British suppliers have had partial access to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership since 2024, when the UK's accession entered into force with those countries that had ratified it. That partial position ended on 1 September 2026. Canada ratified on 3 July, its ratification took effect today, and the agreement now runs between the UK and all eleven other members.
The members are Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam, alongside the UK. Government puts their combined gross domestic product at 9.8 trillion pounds in 2025 before UK accession and 12.9 trillion pounds with the UK counted, both figures taken from the International Monetary Fund's April 2026 forecast. The expected gain to the UK economy is put at around two billion pounds a year in the long run.
What changes for a supplier
The part that matters to anyone who bids for work rather than ships goods is the procurement chapter. Government states that the agreement gives businesses in the UK and Canada access to each other's public procurement markets that were not covered under previous arrangements between them, and names air transport, accounting and financial services as sectors where access widens.
Construction and engineering services are not among the sectors the announcement names. What the chapter covers for those trades has to be read off the schedules, not off the press notice.
A second change is practical rather than legal. Business visitors to Canada who qualify may now stay for up to six months, against a previous limit of 90 days in any six-month period. For a firm supervising a commissioning programme or running a claim across an ocean, that is the difference between one mobilisation and three.
Whether it's selling our world-class food and drink or winning public contracts, we will continue to back British business to succeed across the world, driving growth and creating jobs across the country.
Anas Sarwar, Minister for Trade
The goods side, and what is still unstated
On goods, government states that over 99 per cent of current UK goods exports to member countries will be eligible for zero tariffs. It does not put a figure on how much of that was already tariff free under the bilateral agreements the UK holds with several of these countries, so the marginal gain is not quantified in the announcement and is not estimated here.
Nor does the announcement set out the thresholds above which a Canadian contracting authority must advertise to UK bidders, the entities covered, or the exclusions. Those sit in the agreement's own annexes. A supplier deciding whether to chase Canadian public work should read the schedules for the entity list and the threshold before it books a flight.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer, John Healey, met the Canadian finance minister, Francois-Philippe Champagne, at the G20 finance ministers' meeting in North Carolina, where the two welcomed the accession taking full effect.
The agreement has been in force for the UK for two years. What arrived today is the last member, and with it the procurement opening that was the point of joining for anyone selling services rather than salmon.