Procurement is a key process in construction project management, but Canada suffers from a gap in knowledge regarding sustainable procurement. Previous research has found that the Canadian construction industry is lacking in terms of sustainable procurement initiatives (Ruparathna and Hewage in Journal of Cleaner Production 109:305–314, 2015). The present paper focuses on green public procurement practices in Quebec and asks the question, « How do public buyers appropriate the green public procurement framework?» Three research tools were used in the present study: namely, an analysis of Quebec and Canada’s green public procurement framework, a semi-structured interview process with eight different public bodies, and a questionnaire survey. The results show that even though some importance is given to government regulations for sustainable procurement, it does not act as a main driver and sometimes can represent a barrier when these regulations are not properly understood or implemented. Lack of clarity of the normative framework, prohibitive cost of sustainable procurement, whether real or perceived, availability of resources, and organizational culture were identified by respondents as barriers to green public procurement.