Why Toronto Made ‘the Playoffs’ for Amazon’s Headquarters

Why Toronto Made ‘the Playoffs’ for Amazon’s Headquarters
Mr. Tory said that when he was recently in New York, he found a great deal of interest among American executives in Canada’s relatively new immigration program
that gives visas to certain skilled workers within two weeks.
Toronto, John Tory said, had only “made the playoffs.”
But regardless of the outcome, the announcement that the city remains a contender showed how much progress Toronto,
and the surrounding region, have made in establishing themselves as a major technology center.
The University of Waterloo has long been recognized as one of North America’s top technology schools,
and the University of Toronto is a major center for research in artificial intelligence.
General Motors is adding about 1,000 software engineers to the area who will, among other things, develop systems for self-driving cars,
and Thomson Reuters has made Toronto a technology hub, a move that could create 1,500 jobs.
In sharp contrast to President Trump’s efforts to limit the entry of people from some predominately Muslim countries into the United States, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has repeatedly emphasized
that Canada is open to people of all religions and backgrounds.
Those towns are already home to a major Google engineering operation, a major
artificial intelligence research center and a quantum computing institute.