TORONTO – Amazon Canada plans to hire 200 more workers at its headquarters in Toronto including for positions in software development, engineering, programming, marketing and sales and human resources.
Tamir Bar-Haim, the country manager for the Amazon Media Group, said e-commerce, technology and the Internet are still in their infancy.
“We feel there is still so much room to invent on behalf of the customer,” Bar-Haim said.
“That’s how we feel about our business in Canada. There is still so much room left to grow.”
Amazon employs 3,500 people across Canada at its offices and distribution centres including 600 full-time workers at its downtown Toronto headquarters.
A spokesperson for Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, who was at the Amazon office for the announcement, said the province has not provided the company any subsidies, grants or tax breaks.
Wynne told reporters following the media event that Ontario’s ability attract a company like Amazon shows that there is a large pool of highly-trained workers in the province.
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“There is no doubt that some of the uncertainty we’re feeling in the economy, some of the uncertainty we’re feeling globally, has to do at least in part, with technology,” she said.
“But we have a choice at this point, we can either choose to be concerned and we can retrench and say we’re not going to take part in that and we’re going to have to follow those changes or we can take a leadership role. We are choosing to take a leadership role in Ontario because we have the talent, we have the capacity in our education system, we are ready to play that leadership role.”
– With files from Jessica Smith Cross