A person walks past an Amazon Fulfillment Centre during the COVID-19 pandemic in Brampton, Ont., on April 20, 2021.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
Amazon’s annual Prime Day marketing event in Canada has been put on hold this year amid COVID-19 outbreaks at its facilities in Ontario’s Peel Region.
The postponement of the event was put in place to protect the health and safety of employees and customers, Amazon said in a notice to sellers obtained by The Canadian Press.
“As we continued to monitor the impact of COVID-19 in Canada, we have decided to pause plans for Prime Day 2021 in Canada,” the company said.
Amazon Canada’s Prime Day, an online shopping event featuring discounted products, was held on Oct. 13 and 14 last year but had been held in July prior to the pandemic.
“We will … work with teams to determine the next best steps for Prime Day 2021,” it said.
Just west of Toronto, Peel Region, which has one of the highest community COVID-19 positivity rates in Canada, is home to a number of Amazon’s major fulfillment centres.
Peel’s public-health unit has partly closed three Amazon fulfillment centres – two in Brampton and one in Caledon – in the last two weeks under its order to shut workplaces with five or more cases of COVID-19.
Impossible choices: How this Brampton community explains Canada's COVID-19 crisis like no other
Inside L6P: Why The Globe asked this Brampton community to share its COVID-19 stories
Amazon declined to comment on the postponement, and did not respond to questions about how many of its workers are currently infected or isolating because of COVID-19, nor did it respond to questions about access to paid sick-leave benefits.
On April 20, Amazon Canada’s head of communication, Dave Bauer, said in an e-mail that the company was doing “everything we can to support [employees] and keep them safe through the pandemic, including investing tens of millions of dollars in health and safety measures at our Heritage Road and Bolton facilities, regularly testing all employees multiple times, and providing full pay and benefits to those self-isolating.”
In March, the company was ordered to shut one of its sites in Brampton after a COVID-19 outbreak sickened more than 600 employees. Approximately 5,000 workers at the facility were told to self-isolate for two weeks to contain the outbreak.
This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Facebook and Canadian Press News Fellowship.
Be smart with your money. Get the latest investing insights delivered right to your inbox three times a week, with the Globe Investor newsletter. Sign up today.