Notley disappointed Alberta out of running for new Amazon HQ

CALGARY – Alberta Premier Rachel Notley says it’s disappointing the province won’t be home to Amazon’s second headquarters.

Toronto is the only Canadian city to make the short-list for the e-commerce giant’s new North American office.

Notley says her office spoke with the Seattle-based company and was told the Calgary bid was particularly exciting and reflected well on Alberta.

She says the exercise underscored that the province needs to up its game when it comes to developing mass transit systems.

Notley says Alberta is as big an economic centre as British Columbia and Ontario, but investment in transit lagged under previous governments.

She says diversifying Alberta’s economy away from oil and gas won’t happen overnight and the Amazon bid was a good learning experience.

“There’s no question, it’s unfortunate. It would have been great to have gotten that deal,” Notley said Thursday.

“In the meantime, we are certainly going to continue our work that is focused on diversification. We have a province where there was a lot of talk of diversification for many years, but not a lot of work going on about it.”

Notley said over the last 2 1/2 years the Alberta government has made a lot of investments to turn that corner.

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