Here are five things you need to know this morning:
Goodbye-rs remorse: Amazon’s decision this week to shut seven distribution centres in the province of Quebec and outsource the work to third-party contractors has roiled many stakeholders, including Canada’s industry minister, who has ordered a review of the federal government’s contracts with the e-commerce and data server giant. Francois-Philippe Champagne told Amazon he is instructing the government to review contracts for services like cloud computing in border agencies and health care data. Some individual contracts are worth millions of dollars a year, and collectively much more. In an open letter, Champagne stressed that it is “not too late to reconsider” the decision to shutter the warehouses, all of which have unionized in the past year. Amazon insists the decision is unrelated to the unionization push.
Heinz slams Trudeau for making a ketchup mess: Kraft Heinz said it is “deeply disappointed” in Justin Trudeau after the prime minister floated the ketchup company’s name as an example of how Canadians could choose to “Buy Canadian” in any U.S. trade war. Speaking to reporters this week, Trudeau recalled the brouhaha back in 2018 when Canadians en masse started buying French’s ketchup because it was made in Canada, unlike Heinz that at the time had curbed its Canadian supply chain. Heinz has since reopened Canadian production of its signature product, with 1,000 workers in Quebec making it out of Ontario-grown tomatoes. Trudeau’s comments have clearly left a bad taste in Heinz’s mouth, as the company called his comments “misleading” and “perpetuating a myth,” noting that with the exception of the five years from 2015 to 2020, it has produced ketchup in Canada for more than 100 years.
Kia mulls exporting Mexican-made cars to Canada: South Korean automaker Kia is considering various contingencies in case U.S. President Donald Trump makes good on his threat to slap tariffs on U.S. imports. In an analyst call on Thursday, Seung Jun Kim, senior vice-president with the automaker, said Kia would try to get around any tariffs by shipping less to the U.S. He said Canada is a potential destination for those vehicles. The main vehicle that Kia makes in Mexico is the K4 sedan, of which it produces roughly 120,000 units a year currently bound for the U.S. market.
CIBC pushing some bankers back to full-time in-office: Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce is starting to call its capital-markets bankers back into the office five days a week, Bloomberg is reporting. Staff in the unit were verbally asked to be on-site full time earlier this month. The new head of the unit, Christian Exshaw, was named to head the business earlier this year, and they are a big proponent of in-office work, anonymous sources told Bloomberg. The move appears to be unique to the capital markets business, as a spokesperson for the bank said CIBC’s approach to hybrid work in general “remains unchanged.”
TD names new head for financial risk:
Bloomberg’s Christine Dobby is reporting that TD Bank is promoting one of its top U.S. anti-money-laundering (AML) executives into a new role that will see her head up financial crime risk management for the entire bank. Jacqueline Sanjuas only joined TD in January of last year, but she has been named to replace Herb Mazariegos, who is leaving the bank after less than a year. Mazariegos came to TD from Bank of Montreal as part of TD’s push to clean up the fallout out from its ongoing AML problems in the U.S. division. Sanjuas is already TD’s banking secrecy officer but she will take on more responsibilities, aided by Mazariegos who will leave the company immediately but will “support a smooth transition,” TD said in a statement.
