The political climate south of the border may help – not hurt – Toronto’s chance for winning the bid to host Amazon’s second headquarters, according to the chair of Toronto Global, an agency that aims to attract global investments to the city.
Mark Cohon said while it’s “not for us to speculate” what will happen politically in United States, his agency has received a high volume of calls from U.S. tech companies showing interest in Toronto.
“With what’s going on in the United States right now, in our organization at Toronto Global, half of the calls we are getting and the inbound interest in the Toronto region is coming from U.S. companies,” he told BNN in an interview Thursday. “And 80 per cent is coming from U.S. tech companies.”
“So I think what’s going on in the United States is helping the Toronto region,” he added.
Amazon unveiled its shortlist of cities vying to house the e-commerce giant’s second headquarters Thursday, with Toronto being the only Canadian city to make the cut. Many major U.S. cities, mostly concentrated along the East Coast, including New York, Boston and Washington, D.C., also made the list of 20. Amazon expects the new headquarters to create 50,000 high-paying jobs .
While politicians like Toronto Mayor John Tory and Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne enthusiastically welcomed the news, some in the tech sector expressed their fears about Amazon setting up shop in the city, with one well-known Canadian entrepreneur telling BNN it could be a “disaster.”
“This is a long-term disaster for Canada,” Anthony Lacavera, chairman of Globalive Capital, said Thursday. “What they’re really doing is coming here and identifying our top talent, paying them less than they would have to pay them in the United States and, the ones that rise to the top are just going to be taken down to Seattle or wherever in the U.S. to continue their careers there.”
But Cohon maintains Toronto would be able to handle a company like Amazon coming to the city, arguing it would create “diverse jobs” in the region.
Amazon is expected to make its decision on the winning city before the end of this year.
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