MONTREAL — Delivery times for Amazon in Quebec have more than doubled on some items following the company’s decision to mothball all of its facilities in the province, The Logic has found. Sources have also said that Amazon is yet to sublease any of the seven facilities it shut in Quebec, leaving two million square feet of warehouse space empty and unused.

“We’re decommissioning our leased facilities in Quebec as they close and that process is expected to take some time,” Amazon spokesperson Steve Kelly told The Logic in an email.

Amazon seemingly isn’t in a rush to sublease its facilities in Quebec because the company won’t be relying on them to handle logistics and delivery in the province, according to two sources with knowledge of the deal, and who spoke to The Logic on condition of anonymity as they weren’t authorized to speak publicly about the company. 

“I’ve not heard that anyone has or will sublease” the Amazon centres, one of the sources said. They added that “any number of groups can service Quebec from anywhere,” suggesting that Amazon may look to handle orders placed in Quebec from elsewhere in Canada. 

The company shuttered its Quebec facilities last month following the successful unionization at its warehouse in Laval last May, laying off nearly 2,000 people in the process. At the time, Amazon said that despite shutting all of its facilities in Quebec, it would still “offer the same excellent service and deliver even greater savings” to customers in the province.

Yet in the short term, at least, the closures have apparently affected Amazon Prime delivery times in Montreal. The city was previously covered by same- or next-day delivery on many popular items, but that is seemingly no longer the case. 

A Toronto-based customer with an Amazon Prime membership can get next-day delivery on a box of Lindt chocolates, for example. A Montreal-based Prime member ordering the same item on Wednesday has to wait until Sunday, two days after Valentine’s Day.

Searches in Toronto and Montreal for Cascade detergent pods and an Amazon Basics USB cable yielded similar discrepancies in delivery times between Montreal and Toronto. Kelly disputed that the closures have affected delivery times in Quebec. “Customers will have pretty much the same experience” as before the closures, Kelly said. He added that “drawing broad conclusions based on limited information” was “misleading.”

Amazon has said its decision to leave Quebec was unrelated to the successful unionization campaign at Amazon’s DXT4 facility in Laval by the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN), the province’s second-largest union federation.

Should the company decide to service Quebec orders from outside the province, it wouldn’t be for the first time. All Amazon orders placed in Quebec were handled by out-of-province warehouses prior to the 2020 opening of a Montreal fulfillment centre. 

Amazon’s departure from Quebec also underscores a little-known fact about Amazon’s real estate strategy: The company leases the vast majority of the facilities in which it operates, making it one of the biggest tenants in North America. 

In Quebec, six of Amazon’s seven facilities are owned by Broccolini or individuals associated with the construction company. Choice Properties Real Estate Investment Trust, the real estate income trust controlled by the Weston family, owns a delivery station in the Montreal suburb of Laval. Amazon’s leases in Quebec are 15 years in length, according to a source with knowledge of the matter.

CSN members at the DXT4 facility were seeking higher wages and better supervision of workplace injuries, as well as an end to what the union says is Amazon’s practice of over-hiring and then laying people off. In October, in the wake of its victory at DXT4, the CSN told The Logic it was seeking to unionize all Amazon facilities in Quebec.

The union intends to petition the province’s labour board to cancel the layoffs and compel Amazon to reopen its warehouses in the province, as well as payment of compensation and damages to employees. 

“Amazon has never announced its intention to close shop in Quebec,” CSN president Caroline Senneville told The Logic. “Regardless of how it reorganizes its warehouses and delivery networks, the objective remains the same: to avoid its obligations under the Labour Code and to avoid an arbitrator decreeing a first collective agreement in North America. Such an anti-union ploy is illegal in Quebec, which is what we will argue in court.” 

Kelly said that Amazon had complied with “all applicable federal and provincial laws” in pulling out of Quebec and would continue to do so.

Montreal-based Intelcom is poised to take over last-mile delivery services for at least some Amazon orders in Quebec, Radio-Canada reported. The company has since leased 350,000 square feet of warehouse space in Montreal’s Saint-Laurent neighbourhood. 

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to include additional comment from Amazon.