Amazon on Wednesday said it was closing all of its warehouse and logistics operations in Quebec, the Canadian province where unions gained a foothold in one of its facilities, and would lay off 1,700 employees.
The closures represent a U-turn from Amazon’s recent investments in the province. The company opened three delivery stations in 2021, and one last year. It also had a small fulfillment center in Quebec and two warehouses that sorted packages.
All told, the investments totaled about 2 million square feet of operations, according to an estimate by Marc Wulfraat, a warehousing industry consultant based in Montreal who has long researched Amazon’s logistics network.
Amazon said it is closing the seven facilities to “provide the same great service and even more savings to our customers over the long run,” according to a statement from Barbara Agrait, a company spokeswoman.
Amazon will still serve customers in Quebec by returning to its operational model from before 2020, when facilities in neighboring provinces prepared the packages that were then carried by third-party delivery companies into Quebec.
Amazon’s first union in Canada comprised about 230 warehouse workers in Laval, north of Montreal, after they unionized in May. But the company challenged the unionization effort before a provincial labor tribunal. It argued that the union certification should be revoked because the workers signed union cards to signal their support, instead of voting by secret ballot. The tribunal ruled against Amazon in October, just before the peak holiday shopping season.
Amazon said litigation over the matter was continuing.
With the Quebec closures, “they made it very clear we do not want this spreading,” Mr. Wulfraat said, referring to the union effort. The company has more than 46,000 corporate and operations employees in Canada.
François-Philippe Champagne, the federal innovation minister, said in a post on X that he had conveyed his disappointment to the head of Amazon in Canada.
“This is not the way business is done in Canada,” he said.
The Confédération des Syndicats Nationaux, a union representing the workers, said it was informed of the closures through an email from one of Amazon’s lawyers early this morning. Caroline Senneville, the confederation’s president, said in a statement that the company had been stifling their union drive since it began three years ago, through actions that included what she called “disguised dismissals.”
“It’s a slap in the face for all workers in Quebec,” she said.
Amazon denied claims from the union that the dismissals were improper.
The Montreal metropolitan area has roughly 4.5 million residents, making it larger than the greater Seattle region. Pulling operations out of a major population center is contrary to what Amazon has touted in recent years as a central driver of success within its operations: putting more products closer to customers, to enable faster delivery. That, Amazon has repeatedly said, drives down delivery costs, and causes customers to order more frequently.
Amazon has not abandoned direct operations from a large population center in North America in years, though more than a dozen years ago it routinely played hardball with states that tried to collect taxes for online sales.
Walmart and other retailers in the past have had difficulty establishing a logistics foothold in Quebec, where roughly two out of every five workers are unionized. That’s the highest rate among Canadian provinces, according to government data, and about four times as high as in the United States.
François Legault, the premier of Quebec, said Amazon’s move was “a private decision by a private company.”
“I can understand that it must be tough for the 1,700 families involved,” Mr. Legault told reporters at a news conference on Wednesday, focusing most of his remarks on the need for Quebecers to mobilize and buy local products in response to President Trump’s tariff threat.
Jean Boulet, the province’s labor minister, said workers affected by the warehouse shutdowns would receive assistance from the government to find new jobs.