THS, in plain words

Temporary Help Services Supply Arrangement

What it gates

Temporary staff for federal departments and agencies in the National Capital Region, for three reasons only: a public servant is absent, the workload has risen for a while, or a position is vacant while staffing is under way. It is mandatory in the NCR. A contract runs for up to 48 consecutive weeks, extendable once by up to 24, and is capped at $40,000 without competition, $400,000 for a single resource competed among holders, and $1,000,000 under the larger competitive method. Outside the NCR, temporary help is bought through regional standing offers with fixed hourly rates, refreshed twice a year.

How it is divided

By stream and category, with Junior, Intermediate and Senior levels in each. The streams cover office support, operational, computer services, architectural and design, and electrical, mechanical and engineering technology work, among others; the categories, not the stream, are what a supplier claims. There is no security requirement to hold the arrangement - each request for proposals sets its own. Departments find suppliers through the Centralized Professional Services System and send requests only to those qualified in the category and level.

How you get on it

1. Be in business as the same legal entity for at least 24 months before the quarterly closing, with a street address, a phone number and a professional email. Hold a CRA business number, an SAP Business Network ID that matches it, and a CPSS supplier account; an arrangement can be set aside if the registration is incomplete.
2. Choose categories from work an arm's-length client received in the last five years, one reference per category, confirmed by email. Three substantiated categories qualify the stream; one is enough to hold the arrangement.
3. Submit through the CPSS data collection component against the open request (EN578-172870), and pass the financial viability clause. Nothing goes in on paper unless THS asks for it; a completeness review gives two business days to supply a document you already had.
4. Wait for the quarter's evaluation. A category whose reference does not confirm fails, and can be re-entered next quarter.

When it reopens

Continuously open, evaluated quarterly - April to June, July to September, October to December, January to March - with arrangements issued about three months after each close. Existing holders add categories in the same windows. The current request closes 31 March 2028, the arrangement runs to that date, and Canada holds options to extend it.

Who this is for

Staffing and placement firms, not consultancies. THS buys a person for weeks, at an hourly rate, to sit in a department’s chair; it does not buy an outcome or a project. A firm whose federal work is defined engagements is looking at ProServices or TBIPS instead, and usually knows it.

Why firms get this wrong

Treating it as an IT vehicle. The computer services stream is three categories in a vehicle mostly about office, operational and technical support. A firm that qualifies here expecting TBIPS-shaped work has bought the wrong door.

One reference carrying many categories. Each category needs its own confirmed reference at arm’s length, and the reference confirms by email. As on ProServices, silence fails the category, and a reference who has moved on takes every category that leaned on them.

What we can see, and what we cannot

PSPC does not publish the THS holder list as a whole. Each arrangement it awards is a record in the CanadaBuys contract-history dataset under the solicitation number, with the firm’s name and the date, and the contracts placed under it appear the same way. So when a report of ours says a firm does not hold THS, two things have been checked: no arrangement award under EN578-172870 names the firm, and no contract under the arrangement does either. The record begins in 2019; a firm qualified before that may not appear in it. If you already hold the arrangement, tell us and the report is wrong.