Toronto only Canadian metro area to make it to Amazon’s HQ2 shortlist

Toronto is the only Canadian city on the short list of 20 metropolitan areas that Amazon.com Inc is considering for its second headquarters in North America, dubbed HQ2.

The 20 successful metro regions were selected from 238 submissions submitted last year. Other Canadian metro areas, including Ottawa, Montreal and Vancouver, put in proposals, but only Toronto made the cut.

The Seattle, WA-based tech giant now proceeds to the next stage of the search process and has committed to provide the winner with investments of over US$5 billion and 50,000 high-paying jobs. In addition, the sheer task of building and operating an office campus that’s about the size of the Seattle HQ (752,500 m²) will bring other business opportunities to the winning metropolitan region.

Toronto worked with other cities in the GTA to submit a proposal last October, including the regions of Durham, York, Caledon, Kitchener-Waterloo, Guelph, Hamilton, Halton, Mississauga and Brampton. Toronto’s submission was endorsed by the prime minister and the Ontario premier.

In the next round, Toronto will compete against 19 US cities, including Atlanta, GA; Austin, TX; Boston, MA; Chicago, IL; Columbus, OH; Dallas, TX; Denver, CO; Indianapolis, IN; Los Angeles, CA; Miami, FL; Montgomery County, MD; Nashville, TN; Newark, NJ; New York City, NY;  Northern Virginia, VA;  Philadelphia, PA; Pittsburgh, PA; Raleigh, NC; and Washington DC.

Toronto City mayor John Tory said in a statement that Toronto will continue to work with GTA and regional officials as they go through the next steps in the bidding process.

Ontario has named Ed Clark, former president and CEO of TD Bank Group and business advisor to premier Kathleen Wynne, to help municipal and federal governments succeed in the bid.

But not everyone is enthusiastic to welcome the Amazon to Toronto.

Charles Plant, fellow at Univ of Toronto’s Impact Centre, tells RE$EARCH MONEY that Amazon’s workforce requirement will be the bane of the startup community in the GTA.

“I hope Amazon doesn’t come to Toronto. It would be very, very bad for Toronto. If they hire too many tech people, like programmers, there wouldn’t be enough for Canadian companies that are starting up,” says Plant.

He adds that even if only 10,000 of the 50,000 workforce that Amazon hires are technology people, it would still be a huge drain on the technology community, which is already struggling to look for tech talent.

“We don’t want companies to come here to steal our people,” Plant adds.

In its submission to Amazon, the GTA said the region’s overall population has grown from 2011 to 2016 to more than 433,000, which is 100,000 more than in Seattle. This growth in the GTA is mostly attributed to immigration.

More than 373,000 of the GTA’s workforce are employed in computer, engineering, and science/natural & applied sciences, the submission document notes.

The provincial government has earlier said that it is “doing everything (it) can” to ensure that there’s enough talent for opportunities that companies such as Amazon are providing.

“We are providing free tuition to hundreds of thousands of students, increasing the number of STEM graduates by 25%, and graduating 1,000 applied masters in Artificial Intelligence within five years,” the Ontario government said in a statement about the shortlist announcement.

Amazon said it will dig deeper into the proposals and request additional information before making a decision within the year.

R$