Amazon stays course on Quebec shutdown plan despite pressure from Ottawa
Plans to close all seven of Amazon warehouses in Quebec are unchanged, the company said Friday (Jan. 24) even as the federal industry minister called for a review of Ottawa's "business relationship" with the online retail giant.
"They’ll have me fighting to make sure that this is not going to go unanswered in Canada," Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne said Friday.
The closure will eliminate 1,700 permanent jobs and 250 temporary ones. It comes after workers at an Amazon warehouse in the Montreal suburb of Laval, Que. managed to unionize in May.
Amazon dismissed the suggestion that the closures are linked to a unionization push in the province and has said it's about delivering efficient and cost-effective services to customers.
Initially the company said in a media statement Friday that it's "happy to discuss this matter further with Minister Champagne and other officials in Quebec and Canada.”
Champagne said in an online post Friday that he wanted to speak to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy.
“Mr. Jassy, let’s talk," he wrote.
But in a followup statement issued later in the afternoon, Amazon indicated that Champagne won't be getting a sit-down with the company’s global CEO.
“Members of Amazon’s local team will continue to meet with the minister to discuss our business—as we typically do. Our plans remain unchanged,” a spokesperson said.
Champagne hasn't said how the federal government might respond. The federal government's website lists more than 200 contracts signed with Amazon since 2020.
Several of those contracts are worth more than $5 million each. The biggest, a 2020-2023 deal for "systems services" including facilities management for the Canada Border Services Agency was for $22.7 million.
Another was for a $12.7 million deal to provide computer services to Health Canada.
"I'm not going to tell them what I'm going to do in advance. That's called negotiation 101," he said. "Let them reconsider, let them figure out what we might do as a review."
Champagne also sent a letter to Jassy saying it’s not too late to reconsider the decision to close the warehouses. He posted the letter online Thursday evening.
"We're standing up. I can tell you they were quite surprised," he said. "I think we had more than one million views (on the letter) yesterday, so they're not used to that kind of response from Canada, and I'm glad we did it."
Champagne said the company wasn’t transparent about the extent of the layoffs in the conversation with Amazon, adding he got only half the story when he spoke with a representative. A spokesperson for Champagne confirmed he spoke with Amazon Canada’s country manager Eva Lorenz Wednesday.
"This is also about treating Canada with respect," he told reporters Friday. "I’m even less pleased than I was yesterday."
Amazon said in the statement that when it makes "operational decisions like this, we generally share the news first with employees and then officials."
Public Services Minister Jean-Yves Duclos told reporters it’s "not acceptable to punish workers" because they unionized.
"In Canada, the right to become unionized is a right that is fundamental, and is not only fundamental to the workers but fundamental to the ability of foreign companies, multinational companies, to be able to work with us in our country."
With files from Tara Deschamps
