Trudeau meeting Amazon CEO as Toronto vies for new HQ

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will meet Amazon Corp. chief executive Jeff Bezos during a three-day U.S. trip.

Thestar.com
Feb. 7, 2018
By David Rider

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's office will not say if he plans to promote Toronto's bid for the second Amazon headquarters in his meeting Thursday with Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos.

The Prime Minister's Office isn't predicting what will happen in the closed-door conversation that is part of Trudeau's four-day U.S. trip.

He will "meet with various business leaders and entrepreneurs in the technology sector to explore opportunities for growth in high-quality jobs and investment in Canada," press secretary Eleanore Catenaro told the Star in an email Wednesday.

Another Trudeau spokesman, Cameron Ahmad, told Reuters news service the point of Trudeau's San Francisco meetings with Bezos and other tech leaders is "to portray Canada as a good place to invest . . . and to explore opportunities related to job growth with those prominent business leaders who may be interested in expanding their operations in Canada."

Toronto is the only Canadian city among 20 on Amazon's list of 20 finalists to be the possible home for its second North American headquarters, with a promise of as many as 50,000 jobs and up to $5 billion in investment by the online retail giant based in Seattle.

Amazon has pitted the cities against each other in a bid process reminiscent of Olympic hosting competitions. The Toronto-area bid is unusual in that promises no special incentives, such as tax breaks, instead focusing on the region's assets in terms of tech talent, education institutions, ethnic diversity and openness to newcomers, and cosmopolitan lifestyle. The bid, prepared by agency Toronto Global, does note the U.S. dollar goes further in Canada.

Last October, when several other Canadian cities were still in the running, the prime minister sent a letter to Bezos beginning with "Dear Jeff."

Trudeau outlined commercial, cultural and social reasons why Amazon should call Canada home to the new "HQ2" complex including universal health care that lowers the cost to employers, stable banking systems, and a deep pool of highly educated prospective workers from both at home and abroad.

Trudeau will, on the trip starting Wednesday, meet with other officials including Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner; Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel; Salesforce chairman and chief executive Marc Benioff; Daniel Saks, the co-founder of AppDirect, eBay chief executive Devin Wenig, Amgen chief executive Robert Bradway and California Governor Jerry Brown.

If Toronto movers and shakers also seem quiet about ongoing efforts to win the Amazon headquarters, that is by design.

Julia Sakas, Toronto Global marketing and communications director, confirmed that bid backers have agreed to keep this part of the process secret.

"As with all standard (request for information) processes, this next round required signing a non-disclosure agreement with Amazon," she wrote in an email.

"Amazon is conducting this next phase as a commercial exercise, with a focus on expanding on the information provided in our original bid document - we will be restating the data and information gathered in our bid book, providing clarification and compilation of comparable data for the Toronto region."

Officials in some U.S. competitor cities, which include Boston, New York, Newark, Austin, Washington D.C., and Chicago, are still talking, mostly to tout incentives they are offering ahead of an expected decision later this year.

The State of Maryland is setting aside $5 billion U.S. to woo Amazon to Washington suburb Montgomery County. Maryland's transportation chief said Tuesday his state has promised Amazon a "blank cheque" for transportation improvements required to locate HQ2 near Washington.

Meanwhile University of Toronto cities expert Richard Florida is rallying fellow academics and others to urge political leaders to join a "non-aggression pact" promising not to offer huge incentives to land Amazon.

"Amazon does not need - and should not be going after - taxpayer dollars that could be better used on schools, parks, transit, housing or other much needed public goods," he wrote in a column for CNN.com.

"The company would add far more value to its brand by eschewing incentives and instead working with the winner to address challenges like affordable housing and traffic congestion, which its new headquarters is likely to exacerbate."