A few hours after Ottawa’s threat to “review its business ties” with Amazon due to the multinational’s decision to close seven warehouses in Quebec, the online commerce giant says it is “open” to discussing with the government .
• Also read: Ottawa will review its “business ties” with Amazon, declares Minister Champagne
• Also read: Closures at Amazon: Quebec confirms nearly 1,500 additional layoffs
“We will be happy to discuss this matter further with the Minister [François-Philippe] Champagne and other government officials in Quebec and Canada,” an Amazon spokesperson said on Friday. Wall Street Journalin English.
Amazon, however, reiterated that the company will not back down on the closure of its warehouses in Quebec, according to sources who confirmed the decision to TVA Nouvelles.
The company remains open to talking with governments about their other projects, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) computer data storage centers.
The day before, Canada’s Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry warned Amazon CEO Andy Jassy that the federal government could review its business ties with AWS.
The Journal calculated that the various federal government departments and agencies have awarded at least $145 million in contracts to Amazon since 2020, most of them for cloud computing and IT services. The real amount could be around $200 million.
-Minister Champagne welcomed this new opening from Amazon on social networks Friday afternoon, with a short message:
“Mr. Jassy, let’s talk. Canada is a great place to do business,” he wrote.
A few hours earlier, he had called the exodus unacceptable when he arrived at the caucus Friday morning.
Amazon announced on Wednesday the closure of seven warehouses in Quebec over the next two months, a decision which will result in the layoff of 1,700 people and much collateral damage. Quebec confirmed nearly 1,500 additional layoffs among subcontractors on Wednesday.
The multinational justified itself by saying it wanted to return to a third-party delivery model, but the CSN, which represented workers at the DXT4 warehouse in Laval, maintains that these closures are anti-union retaliation, which Amazon denies.
In Quebec, the Fréchette ministry’s office said it had not had any discussions with Amazon since Wednesday, when the company briefly explained its decision to them.
– With the collaboration of Alain Laforest
