Get your business certified — no course required.

Direct Certification is one of two routes to the BEBC Black Business Certification, and it is the route for businesses that are already up and running. You apply straight to certification — you do not have to take our 12-week Procurement & Certification Readiness Course™ first, and you do not need to have been a BEBC participant before.

What it costs

The certification fee is $350 CAD and it is payable in full when you submit this application. It pays for the audit of your business, so it is charged whether the outcome is a yes or a no, and it is non-refundable — including if your application is declined or you withdraw part-way through. Please read the document list in this form before you pay, so you know exactly what you will be asked for.

What the review involves

Every application is reviewed by hand by our Black Business Certification Group (BBCG) audit team. They verify three things, and all three have to hold:

• •that 51% or more of the business is owned by Black Canadians or people of African descent
• •that Black owners hold the senior management roles
• •that Black owners genuinely control the business — the day-to-day operations and the final decisions

The team reads your documents against your answers. They may come back to you for extra documentation, a short interview with the owners, or a site visit.

How long it takes

Most reviews are finished within four to six weeks of us receiving your complete document set. An application with documents still outstanding waits in the queue until the set is complete, so the fastest route by far is to send everything at once.

What you get

A BEBC Black Business Certification for your business: a certificate and a certification number you can put in front of corporate and government buyers, and a listing in the BEBC supplier directory those buyers search. Your certification is valid for one year from the date on your certificate.

Renewing each year

Certification is renewed every year. Before each renewal we ask you to confirm that your business is still active, that it is still 51% or more Black-owned, and to tell us about anything that has changed in your ownership, structure or control. Once you have confirmed that, the $350 renewal fee is charged to the card you pay with today. If something material has changed, nothing is charged automatically — your renewal goes to our team to look at first.

If we need more from you

Not every application is a clean yes or a clean no. If your business looks eligible but your file is incomplete, or something needs explaining, we will move your application to "more information requested" and tell you precisely what we need. That is not a decline: your application stays open and your fee stays applied to it.