In its August 2026 decision in Land Design Inc. v. Ontario Infrastructure, the Ontario Divisional Court upheld a public agency’s decision to disqualify a bidder after that bidder met with Ontario Premier Doug Ford during a bidding process for the redevelopment of Ontario Place.
By way of background, the bidder, Land Design Inc., was previously selected to provide a three-dimensional model for the project and was a prospective bidder for the subsequent Request for Proposals (RFP) for the construction phase of the project. After the RFP was released, one of the bidder’s employees met Ontario Premier Doug Ford at an unrelated event and informed the Premier of the three-dimensional Ontario Place model. The Premier expressed interest in the design. The bidder’s employee followed up with the Premier’s staff to arrange a meeting at the bidder’s office that was attended by the Premier and the Minister of Tourism.
Infrastructure Ontario subsequently disqualified the bidder for breaching the RFP’s no-lobbying rules that prohibited lobbying aimed at influencing the outcome of a bidding process. The bidder requested a reconsideration of the disqualification decision, but Infrastructure Ontario upheld its initial decision in a subsequent reconsideration process. The bidder brought a judicial review application to the Ontario Divisional Court seeking to strike down the disqualification. However, the court dismissed the application after concluding that the disqualification was reasonable.
In its legal analysis the court noted that government procurement decisions remain subject to judicial review where they involve a significant public interest element. While the court was careful to note that the size and cost of a public procurement project will not always be determining factors, the high-profile nature of the Ontario Place project, and the fact that the case involved “issues related to the integrity of the process” where the grounds for disqualification turned on “the involvement of senior members of the Executive, including the Premier and a Minister of the Crown” provided the basis for judicially reviewing the disqualification since it had a “serious public dimension”.
However, in reviewing the decision, the court ultimately concluded that the disqualification was reasonable and should not be struck down. As the court explained, allowing the Premier and Minister to visit its offices during the bidding process was a “direct violation” of the RFP’s no-lobbying rules that “would reasonably be viewed by other respondents as an unfair advantage for LANDinc in the RFP Process.”
The court rejected the bidder’s argument that the visit was a reasonable consequence of LANDinc’s “incumbency” as the party that had previously provided the three-dimensional project model. Rather, the court found that this was “an additional advantage obtained by LANDinc by leveraging its incumbency to contact and meet with senior political actors.” As the court noted, the meeting went beyond a “chance encounter” and was “a planned, organized visit by the Premier and the Minister to review work done by LANDinc under a prior contract, with private discussions involving the Premier, the Minister, and senior LANDinc personnel.”
The court determined that Infrastructure Ontario acted reasonably in disqualifying the bidder after the bidder failed “to identify the problematic nature of a visit from the Premier and a Minister to LANDinc in the midst of the RFP Process” and that “other respondents could reasonably conclude that LANDinc leveraged its position as an incumbent contractor to gain an advantage over other respondents by meeting with the Premier and the Minister.”
While the court acknowledged that the “appearance of advantage an incumbent contractor may enjoy is unavoidable and inherent in a project in which contracts are let on a staged basis”, it found that “exacerbating this apparent advantage, as was done here, justifies the firm response of disqualification.” Citing prior case law on point, the court concluded that “the integrity of the procurement process requires enforcing prohibitions against contact with elected officials during an active RFP process.”
As this case illustrates, elected officials do not have the authority to change the tendering rules after a bidding process is initiated. Even where they agree to meet with bidders during a bid competition, this does not give those bidders legal immunity from a subsequent disqualification for breaching no-lobbying rules.
In summary, bidders who are competing for high-profile public procurement contracts should avoid contacting senior elected officials or other government officials who could influence bid award decisions. Those bidders would be wise to abide by the strict “single-point-of-contract” protocols that are a standard part of a public tendering process and avoid any conduct that could constitute a breach of the no-lobbying rules.
