(Visual: Naomi Wildeboer/Hill Times Publishing)
Disguise Canadian? Feds frame U.S. chatbot contracts as Ottawa-based procurement
Regulatory | |October 1, 2026
Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) spent $1.2 million on contracts for its artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Procura, which was awarded to U.S.- and U.K.-based multinational companies — despite the department framing the companies as Ottawa-based.
According to a government response to a written question from Conservative MP Kurt Holman (London—Fanshawe, Ont.), five contracts for the development, implementation, and operation of Procura were awarded to three companies: Allegis Group Inc.’s Teksystems, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC), and Infosys Ltd subsidiary Infosys Public Services.
Q-1229, submitted by Holman on May 26, asked for contract details, as well as where each company or vendor is “headquartered or primarily located.”
According to the government response, each of the companies is based in Ottawa.
But all three organizations’ head offices are actually located abroad.
Allegis Group, headquartered in Maryland, U.S., is one of the world’s largest privately-held talent management firms. Its subsidiary Teksystems, which was awarded three contracts for a total of $609,761, is also headquartered in Maryland.
Infosys Public Services, commissioned for $145,218 as an extension of the work it already does managing the CanadaBuys website, is also headquartered in Maryland, while the buck stops with its India-based parent company.
PwC, called on for a $248,529 contract, is headquartered in London, U.K.
Infosys Public Services is the only contracted company whose Canadian headquarters are in Ottawa. While PwC and Teksystems both have offices in Ottawa, their Canadian HQs are in Toronto and Mississauga, Ont., respectively.
Asked by The Wire Report why the companies were listed as Ottawa-based, PSPC said “Infosys Public Services Inc and Teksystems Canada Corp both have their registered business addresses in Ottawa, while [PwC] has its registered business address listed in Toronto.”
PSPC did not respond to questions about why PwC was listed as Ottawa-based, despite having its registered business address in Toronto.
The chatbot, which is still in the beta phase, is an online support tool developed to “help suppliers quickly locate general information about the federal procurement process,” according to the government’s CanadaBuys website.
Heading the Procura webpage is a banner informing users of the government’s Buy Canadian Policy, which came into effect in December 2025.
Four of the five contracts started in 2025, while the PwC agreement was the only contract opened after the implementation of the Buy Canadian Policy, although the department did not specify the date the contract was commissioned.
Before the Liberal government’s response, it was unknown how much the department spent on the pilot project.
The release of the contract information comes amid Prime Minister Mark Carney (Nepean, Ont.) championing foreign investments in Canada, and diversifying the country’s economy.
Ottawa’s investments in AI have previously come under fire for being hived off to American companies for project development.
In 2025, the government invested $240 million in Cohere Inc., Canada’s only sovereign large language model, to help the company scale its compute capacity. Cohere used that investment to help commission American-owned CoreWeave Inc. to build and operate the company’s Canadian data centre.
The Wire Report reached out to Holman and Procurement Minister Joël Lightbound (Louis-Hébert, Que.) for comment on the department’s Procura investments, but did not receive a response.
